Modified Challenge-Based Teaching of Biotransport Phenomena

Major challenges of teaching biotransport phenomena are the interdisciplinary nature of biotransport principles, and diverse backgrounds of students from biology, biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering majors. These challenges make traditional lecture-based instruction less effective, and difficult to implement new discovery and knowledge into the lecture material. In order to overcome these challenges, it has been proposed to teach biotransport phenomena based on the “How People Learn” (HPL) methodology [1–3]. The HPL methodology is a challenge-based pedagogic method in which students learn the principles through solving the assigned challenges. Adaptation of this pedagogic method to bioengineering courses is actively being developed and supported by NSF (VaNTH-ERC). This method has been shown to be very effective in teaching interdisciplinary science and engineering principles if the challenge modules are carefully designed.