Bioinstrumentation: A Project-Based Engineering Course

This paper presents the development, implementation, and assessment of a project-based Bioinstrumentation course. All course lectures and hands-on laboratory activities are related to a central project theme: a cardiac pacemaker. The students create a benchtop cardiac pacemaker by applying instrumentation knowledge acquired in the course to each stage of device development. This approach emphasizes both conceptual and practical student learning: The students must apply theory learned in the course to create their devices. Indirect and direct assessment performed with respect to the major course objective demonstrated that course participants were able to successfully design, construct, and test a bioinstrumentation system. The students perceived a marked increase in their instrumentation knowledge, objectively corroborated by their performance on specific exercises related to the creation of their benchtop pacemakers. The outcomes of the course development presented here, along with the course structure and pedagogical methodology, may enhance engineering education by acting as a guideline for the creation of courses in which a central project theme is used as a platform for concept instruction.