This week, we finished up the electronics teaching modules and then found a new project to work on! Dr. Moshi, one of the professors in the electrical engineering department, asked us to help review the proposed revisions for the new biomedical curriculum to be implemented in the fall.

This past year, I was one of 7 students on the Rice BIOE department’s Advisory Board. We surveyed fellow students, researched other schools’ programs, and wrote reports making recommendations for changes to our curriculum. Getting the chance to help improve DIT’s BME curriculum was super exciting, especially since our fellow interns have been telling us about its many weaknesses since day 1.

We spent a few days collecting feedback on the proposed curriculum from current and former students. Overall, they were pleased with most of the changes: reducing unnecessary modules from 12 per semester to 9, combining courses that didn’t have enough material to be stand-alone modules, and adding more practical content.

We then spent a day working with Dr. Moshi to better understand the content of the proposed curriculum and go over the comments and feedback we received from the DIT interns. The new curriculum should provide a better and more-well rounded education for future DIT students. However, many more changes will be necessary before it can be effectively implemented.

Many of the problems with the current curriculum seem to lie with lack of practical skills and fundamental knowledge. We anonymously surveyed more than 15 students and found some concerning results. Students overwhelmingly complained that the large number of modules “kept them busy” with unnecessary information rather than allowing them to focus on important core modules. They also told us that lecturers of biomedical courses often did not show up, and for some classes have only attended 1 or 2 lectures the entire semesters. This forces students to basically guess at what would be covered by midterms and final exams. Even when they did show up, there was no syllabus or course plan for the class, so lecture content was determined by the depth of the instructor’s knowledge rather than importance of each topic. They want more support, both in terms of money and instructor guidance, during their final year design project. And finally, students emphasized a need for practical experience in their coursework, from learning basic electronics skills to actually seeing and being able to take apart the equipment they are learning how to maintain and troubleshoot.

The new curriculum seems to alleviate some of these problems. The overall number of modules has been reduced, and hours have seemingly been set aside for practicals. We’ve also pointed out modules where the Rice troubleshooting course can be implemented and provided example circuits and teaching materials for learning practical electronics. However, instructors must be held responsible for attending lectures and actually communicating the knowledge that they’re hired to teach.

One method we suggested was to have instructors create course syllabi and schedules for the semester. This would also help students understand how much each subtopic is emphasized and provides a study guide. Finally, a syllabus would hopefully ensure that scheduled practicals actually occur as planned. We sent Dr. Moshi a few examples of Rice course syllabi, which we hope will provide a good starting point. Dr. Moshi seems excited about the new curriculum’s potential, but acknowledges that it’ll be a lot of work. He predicts that his fellow instructors will be resistant to creating the documents, so the responsibility to create and reinforce the syllabi may fall on him.

Dr. Moshi seems to be somewhat of a visionary in terms of trying to change DIT’s education system. He’s in charge of curriculum for 8 degree programs and recently attended a conference on active learning in Malawi headed by Drs. Matthew Wettergreen (current Rice engineering lecturer) and Ann Saterbak (former Rice professor and basically the creator of Rice BIOE). He came back from the conference with lots of ideas for improving the BME curriculum by implementing more practical project-based learning. Though he seems so stressed out already, I hope that he will be able to fulfill his dream of creating a more effective curriculum.