BME professor develops innovative way to teach students about circuits
The Analog & Digital Lab Trainer
The Analog & Digital Lab Trainer allows students to complete electronic exercises more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional “breadboard” methods. This has allowed instruction to continue remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

November 22, 2021 — A remote learning innovation has become the go-to method for teaching some University of Minnesota biomedical engineering students basic electronics.

Creating at-home lab boxes

Students in one of Prof. Steven Saliterman’s courses now receive an Analog and Digital Lab Trainer board kit, along with a home lab box containing all the materials they need to assemble a custom-designed circuit board themselves. 

The design reduces an entire curriculum’s exercises to a single board, featuring 50 test points for connecting a handheld combination oscilloscope/function generator/multimeter to individual modules for studying signals. 

The Analog & Digital Lab Trainer is unique in layout, operation, and function. The circuit modules resemble the way they would be drawn in a schematic (reading left to right), and the test point locations match this layout. In addition, students can easily interconnect the individual test points to bring multiple modules together. This enhances the learning experience and was never easily accomplished through traditional breadboard methods.

Materials include:

  • The Analog & Digital Lab Trainer board 
  • Electronic components
  • Circuit simulation software
  • Self-guided instruction and exercise booklet
The home lab box contains the trainer board, soldering and assembly tools, power supply, part organizer, and handheld combination oscilloscope, function generator, and multimeter.
The home lab box contains the trainer board, soldering and assembly tools, power supply, part organizer, and handheld combination oscilloscope, function generator, and multimeter.

    Saliterman developed the training system for last spring’s BMEN 2151 Introductory Medical Device Prototyping course as a way to overcome the challenges of teaching students about circuits remotely. Creating an ergonomically suitable platform to accomplish this took many iterations and months of experimenting.

    Facilitating independent learning

    The system has been a smashing success, as evidenced by test scores, student feedback, and student’s ability to grasp the material independently. 

    In fact, according to Prof. Saliterman, last spring marked the first time that nearly all students completed every exercise working independently, which maximized the time the class could devote to signal analysis discussions. Prof. Saliterman taught each lab, while students with assembly questions could work with the TA in video breakout rooms. 

    Saliterman can’t imagine reverting to the previous teaching method, in which students laboriously breadboarded a series of standard designs. According to Saliterman, far too much time was spent troubleshooting wiring errors to get the exercise operational, leaving little time for signal analysis and understanding the underlying theory. 

    A demonstration of the “Schmitt Trigger,” one of many signal analysis exercises possible once the board is assembled.
    A demonstration of the “Schmitt Trigger,” one of many signal analysis exercises possible once the board is assembled. The late Prof. Otto Schmitt, a mentor of Prof. Steven Saliterman, is the namesake of an Institute for Engineering in Medicine lecture series.

    Expanding to other areas of electronics and biology

    Saliterman envisions the system being used with other laboratory exercises. The latest iteration of the Analog & Digital Lab Trainer board may be interconnected with similar boards designed for different applications, expanding the training experience. 

    Other boards in development include a microcontroller board, sensor and actuator board, tissue biomechanics board, and molecular and cellular biology board. Traditional laboratory-based training will soon be enhanced with course-specific hybrid electronic-microfluidic training systems.

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