A Multidisciplined Teaching Reform of Biomaterials Course for ...

A Multidisciplined Teaching Reform of Biomaterials Course for Undergraduate Students Xiaoming Li, Feng Zhao, Fang Pu, Haifeng Liu, Xufeng Niu, Gang Zhou, Deyu Li, Yubo Fan, Qingling Feng, Fuzhai Cui & Fumio Watari Journal of Science Education and Technology ISSN 1059-0145 J Sci Educ Technol DOI 10.1007/s10956-015-9559-3

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Author's personal copy J Sci Educ Technol DOI 10.1007/s10956-015-9559-3

A Multidisciplined Teaching Reform of Biomaterials Course for Undergraduate Students Xiaoming Li1 • Feng Zhao1 • Fang Pu1 • Haifeng Liu1 • Xufeng Niu1 • Gang Zhou1 • Deyu Li1 • Yubo Fan1 • Qingling Feng2 • Fu-zhai Cui2 • Fumio Watari3

Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Abstract The biomaterials science has advanced in a high speed with global science and technology development during the recent decades, which experts predict to be more obvious in the near future with a more significant position for medicine and health care. Although the three traditional subjects, such as medical science, materials science and biology that act as a scaffold to support the structure of biomaterials science, are still essential for the research and education of biomaterials, other subjects, such as mechanical engineering, mechanics, computer science, automatic science, nanotechnology, and Bio-MEMS, are playing more and more important roles in the modern biomaterials science development. Thus, the research and education of modern biomaterials science should require a logical integration of the interdisciplinary science and technology, which not only concerns medical science, materials science and biology, but also includes other

subjects that have been stated above. This article focuses on multidisciplinary nature of biomaterials, the awareness of which is currently lacking in the education at undergraduate stage. In order to meet this educational challenge, we presented a multidisciplinary course that referred to not only traditional sciences, but also frontier sciences and lasted for a whole academic year for senior biomaterials undergraduate students with principles of a better understanding of the modern biomaterials science and meeting the requirements of the future development in this area. The course has been shown to gain the recognition of the participants by questionaries and specific ‘‘before and after’’ comments and has also gained high recognition and persistent supports from our university. The idea of this course might be also fit for the education and construction of some other disciplines. Keywords Multidisciplinary Biomaterials Educational course Undergraduate student

Feng Zhao is co-first author of this article. & Xiaoming Li [email protected] & Deyu Li [email protected] & Yubo Fan [email protected] 1

Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology of Ministry of Education, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

2

State Key Laboratory of New Ceramic and Fine Processing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

3

Department of Biomedical Materials and Engineering, Graduate School of Dental Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8586, Japan

Introduction The biomaterials science plays an increasingly prominent role in contemporary life. Although the inception of biomaterials science emerged just about 50 years ago, this field has undergone a consistent growth with a steady introduction of new ideas and productive branches, and many companies invested large amounts of money in the development of new products. In terms of the development of modern biomaterials science, some scientific achievements have benefited from the cross-cutting collaboration between different disciplines based on the fact that some knowledge or advantages in one discipline can help to resolve the problems, which cannot be worked out by the

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Author's personal copy J Sci Educ Technol

ways in their own discipline, with the points or views of the specific sense or technology. Three traditional disciplines, such as medical science, biology and materials science, have been acting as the scaffold, supporting the structure of biomaterials science. However, the further development of biomaterials science has been in urgent need of the knowledge from much more other disciplines. So far, many other disciplines have gotten involved into the research of modern biomaterials science, including mechanical science, mechanics, computer science, automatic science, nanotechnology, Bio-MEMS, etc., which has been changing the traditional development model of this field. Another important factor affecting the development of modern biomaterials science is senior undergraduate students who have been recognized to the hope of the future development of science and technology in the world. On the other hand, excellence is not an act, but a habit, just as what Aristotle said, ‘‘We are what we repeatedly do.’’ Undergraduate stage is the most important period for the persons to develop their ability to innovate. Therefore, the undergraduate education is crucial to not only the development of science and technology, but also the personal growth and development of the students themselves. Above all, the application of the related interdisciplinary knowledge into the undergraduate education of the biomaterials field and the cultivation of the discipline-crossing innovation ability of the students is of great importance for the development of modern biomaterials science. However, the current education of biomaterials for graduate students is incomplete and has not provided a comprehensively multidisciplined systems approach. Moreover, there is a large gap blocking the collaboration of different disciplines because the traditional educational environment or method has been deeply implanted into students’ and instructors’ minds. Thus, it is a big challenge to integrate knowledge from different related disciplines into the biomaterials undergraduate curricula. To address these educational challenges and meet the development requirements of modern biomaterials science, it is urgent to generate a better approach to the educational reform of biomaterials science with focusing on the multidisciplinary nature. Only in this way, can the students realize the significance of multidiscipline and improve their cooperative ability in this field to address unforeseen challenges. In this paper, we firstly presented some disciplines that have been shown to be involved in modern biomaterials science development. Then, a new multidisciplinary course for undergraduate students of biomaterials was designed, which emphasizes the importance of the multidisciplinary nature and highlights the development trend of this field in the future. The course has been shown to gain the recognition of the participants and significant education achievements.

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The Main Disciplines that are Involved in Biomaterials Materials Science A biomaterial is normally thought to be a material that is used to direct the specific therapeutic or diagnostic course by interactions with biological systems. Biomaterials are one kind of materials. So, material science is very important for the research and education of biomaterials. The composition, shape, structure, physical and chemical properties can directly determine the final implant fate of the biomaterials. The distinctive difference between biomaterials and other functional materials is that they should possess biocompatibility and specific bioactivity. At present, biomaterial applications span from prostheses (e.g., hip implants and artificial heart valves), tissue regeneration, medical devices to drug delivery. Although the chemical composition of biomaterials has been the focus of their design for past decades, there are actually some other important material factors that have significant effects on the final implant fate of the biomaterials. For example, it has been shown that the biomaterials whose dimensional scales were similar to those of some specific molecules or cells could have significant effects on how the cells perceived, interacted with, and ingested materials, which would directly determine the efficacy of the biomaterials used as drug carriers or vehicles targeting specific cells and tissues in vivo (Tsapis et al. 2002). In addition, some materials, such as fibers (Li et al. 2006, 2014b), nanotubes (Li et al. 2010) and calcium phosphate (Li et al. 2008), could be used as to reinforce the mechanical properties or enhance other properties of the base biomaterial, thereby improving their performances in vivo. Actually, biomaterials used for different purposes should be prepared differently. At first, original materials should be specifically chosen based on their physical and chemical properties. Then, the appropriate methods or techniques should be used to manufacture required material shape with specific structure and adequate mechanical properties. Generally speaking, the particular material properties are strongly correlated with the performance of the biomaterials in vivo. Medical Science Biomaterials have been widely used as the substitution for medical applications since antiquity. The performance of these artificial substitutes, such as blood vessels and bones, all relies on the understanding of anthroposomatology. After the preparation of the biomaterials, animal experiment is necessary for their applications. The effects of different materials on the functions of organs or tissues are


evaluated through the animal experiment, such as bone, cartilage, muscle tissues (Li et al. 2014a). In orthopedic implants, such as hip or knee prosthesis, osteointegration (i.e., bone formation) is required to stabilize the implant into bone. However, it is unfortunate that the osteointegration cannot be obtained in a lot of cases because of the inappropriate design and unreasonable preparation of the implants, which normally leads to loosening of the implants and often requires more operation and surgery. Furthermore, bone implants should not only temporarily fill bone defects, but also provide a framework, into which the host bone and vascular networks can regenerate. So, they should act as scaffolds to support new bone, blood vessels and soft tissue formation to connect fractured bone segments, thus strengthening the grafted area and fixating it. Moreover, to design better orthopedic implant, materials need to put emphases on cellular processes, such as their initial adhesion, proliferation and differentiation. In addition, coordinated regulation and activities between tissueforming cells and tissue-resorbing cells needed to be understood well. Unregulated activities between those two kinds of cells may lead to necrotic (or dead) tissues juxtaposed to the implants. For bone repair implants, another undesired event is fibrous soft tissue formation by fibroblasts. Excessive fibrous tissue formation hinders the activities of bone-related cells, thereby resulting in less or inadequate bone regeneration between the implants and the host bone. Therefore, biomaterials science and medical science are inseparable. Biology It is well known that there are significant interactions between implants and the surrounding tissues. At present, the new generation of biomaterials has been designed to manage the behavior of proteins, biomoleculars and cells and thereby guide the formation of specific tissues, even organs. As far back as the late first century AD, artificial biomaterials manufactured through amazing simple technique have been applied to dental surgery as functional implants (Crubzy et al. 1998). As representative ancient functional implants, those materials seemed to be in direct apposition with the surrounding tissues. However, it has been shown that the failure of most current implants, hybrid artificial organs and medical devices mainly results from undesirable biological interactions between the biomaterials and surrounding microenvironment. For example, the failure of artificial blood vessels has mostly been caused by the inappropriate or excessive protein adsorption. However, in some cases, it is desired that some specific proteins are adequately adsorbed on the implants. It has been shown that specific proteins adsorbed on carbon nanotubes might not only improve cell

attachment and proliferation, but also differentiate the inducible cells derived from soft tissues to osteogenic cells, which form inductive bone (Li et al. 2012). It has been generally recognized that the results of interactions between the implanted biomaterials and their biological microenvironments have significant effects on the proteins and gene express in the target cells and thereby determine the final efficacy of the biomaterials. Over the past decades, the emphasis of the research and development of new biomaterials has been turned from the ‘‘passive’’ materials to the materials that actively interact and integrate with their biological microenvironments. Biomimetic preparation has been shown one of effective methods to make the materials keep harmonious and desirable interactions with their biological microenvironments. Figure 1 shows a strategy for designing biomimetic materials that were regarded as conductors to guide specific tissue regeneration on the surfaces of solid implants or inside the bodies of porous implants (Healy et al. 2006). However, the important research shift has not been matched by necessary reform of our education and a requisite enhancement of our knowledge about the mechanisms of the interactions between the implanted materials and their biological microenvironments. Others Although the three traditional disciplines, stated above, have been still acting together as a tripod to support biomaterials, the other subjects, such as mechanical science, mechanics, computer science, automatic science, nanotechnology, Bio-MEMS, etc., have been playing more and more important roles in the biomaterial design and development. Mechanical Engineering Biomaterials are a kind of substances that are prepared and manufactured with methods or techniques in mechanical engineering to be used in human beings. How to design or choose manufacturing techniques to meet the requirements in vivo plays an essential part in the research and development of biomaterials. At present, novel methods and techniques are demanded urgently to design and manufacture high-performance scaffolds and films to guide functional tissue regeneration. Though used for several decades, the conventional techniques for biomaterials manufacture, such as fiber bonding, solvent casting, particulate leaching, membrane lamination and melt molding (Freed et al. 1994; Hutmacher 2000; Mikos and Temenoff 2000), have been shown limited and inadequate to meet the requirement of the modern biomaterials science development. New techniques, such as rapid prototyping (RP), laminated object

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Author's personal copy J Sci Educ Technol Fig. 1 Design of biomimetic materials to direct biological responses (Healy et al. 2006)

manufacturing, three-dimensional (3D) printing and 3D plotting, have been applied in the biomaterials field. Those new techniques have improved significantly the dimensional accuracy of biomaterial products, making it possible to obtain high-performance thin-film biodegradable and bioresorbable materials with controllable and reproducible porosity and well-defined 3D microstructures and enhance largely structure interconnectivity and the regulation of the necessary pores inside biomaterials (Ang et al. 2002; Agarwala et al. 1996; Cima et al. 1991). Especially for RP, also termed ‘‘solid freeform fabrication (SFF),’’ it is a new technique based on the advanced manufacturing technology and computer science. RP has been currently used in the medical field to guide surgical procedures using tactile models derived from patient computerized tomography (CT) data (Chua et al. 1997). These models have been used to prepare personalized implants, which have significantly

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improved the surgical efficacy. So, mechanical engineering is essential for the preparation and manufacture of biomaterial samples and products and promoting the development of modern biomaterials science. Mechanics It has been recognized generally that mechanical phenomenon can be found in almost every field of science and engineering. To keep the structure of biomaterials in vivo, which can further provide an ideal environment for the migration and proliferation of cells, they had a better supply of adequate mechanical strength during the initial healing state. In addition, abundant mechanical properties lay the foundation of surgery when the materials need to be properly handled and sutured. One the other hand, as a dynamic and hierarchically organized composite, native


extracellular matrix (ECM) can not only supply mechanical support which the embedded cells need, but also provide mechanical stimulations to regulate the functions of various cellular, such as adhesion, migration, proliferation, differentiation and tissue morphogenesis. So, ideal scaffolds should possess satisfactory mechanical properties besides good biocompatibility. On the other hand, cells and tissues in vivo have been in their own biomechanical environment, which will support their normal metabolism. For example, natural bone must be continuously under appropriate mechanical loading to maintain its normal functions. However, biomaterials will affect the stress/strain distribution on surrounding tissues and cells after implanted in vivo. So, different mechanobiological responses will occur in tissues and cells surrounding different implants. Thereby, the proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis of the surrounding cells, the reconstruction process of the surrounding tissue and the degradation of the biomaterials will be affected. So, the knowledge of mechanics is very important during the design of implants, and biomechanical evaluations are crucial during the development of biomaterials. Computer Science Nowadays, computer has been widely used. Most work is becoming computer based. Computer science has been infiltrating almost every discipline including biomaterials. Computer simulation can provide many important insights at the molecular level during materials research and development by a series of techniques, such as Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics methods. (Binder 1995). Many properties of biomaterials have been successfully determined or accurately predicted by computer simulations through detailed molecular descriptions. Specifically, computer simulation is a rather useful technique in the research of biomaterial surface and interface, by which the effects of biomaterial microenvironments on the interactions between biomaterial surfaces and biological tissues can be studied. Besides computer simulation, computational intelligence (CI) can also be used as one of the most important tools for biomaterial education and research. The hybrid CI techniques have been used in biomedical field (Samanta and Nataraj 2008; Samanta et al. 2009a, b). Digitally acquired heart sound recorded during auscultation after the heart valvular replacement surgery for three different heart conditions was processed through continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for feature extraction. The features extracted from the CWT scalograms were used in CI for diagnosis of heart condition. Most importantly, CI has been playing important roles to achieve evaluable data from all the gotten information, which benefits the design and optimization of biomaterials.

Automation Science Automation has had a notable impact on a wide range of industries. Medical processes such as primary screening in radiography and analysis of bioscience such as human genes, cells and tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by automated systems. Automatic science has also been shown to play an important role in accurate and efficient analyses of biomaterials. As a transducer or a detector element that works in a physicochemical, optical, piezoelectric or electrochemical way, biosensor can transform signals resulting from the interactions between analytes and biological elements into the special signals that can be easily and accurately measured and quantified. For example, investigations into the surface properties of biomaterials by biosensor techniques have been already launched. Most biomaterials are used as implants. Satisfactory biocompatibility is crucial for the final efficacy of the implants. One the other hand, some implants must be exenterated because of the tissue reactions and resultant health problems (Khan et al. 2008; Schierholz and Beuth 2001). Therefore, the initial contact between the surface of biomaterials and body fluid should be very important although the time is very short. During this time, many kinds of proteins are adsorbed on the surface of the biomaterials, which have significant effects on their biocompatibility. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is a potent analytical technique for the characterization of the adsorbed proteins. The dynamic procedure of the protein adsorption on the biomaterial surfaces can be observed very accurately in real time. More importantly, this technique can be also used for the identification and quantification of the adsorbed proteins or molecules through specific antibodies. In summary, automatic science is very important for the accurate and effective evaluations of biomaterials and thereby helpful for the optimization of their design and preparation. Nanotechnology The appearance and development of the nanotechnology pushed the science into nano-scaled fields, in which lots of great scientific achievements have been gotten. For example, nano-scaled material research is a field that takes a materials science-based approach on nanotechnology. The nano-dimensionality of nature has logically given rise to the interest in using nano-scaled materials as biomaterials. Because some of nano-scaled materials possess similar dimensions as natural tissues, they have unique characteristics that other materials lack. For example, bigger ratio of surface area to volume is one of the main characteristics of nano-scaled materials, which makes new quantum mechanical effects possible and the electronic properties

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altered. Those characteristics of nano-scaled materials have been recognized to significantly affect the microenvironments in vivo and thereby regulate specific tissue regenerations (Fig. 2; Stevens and George 2005). It has been found that some kinds of nano-scaled materials could induce special cellular functions in vitro and certain new tissue formations in vivo by adsorbing specific proteins based on their distinctive properties (Li et al. 2009a, b 2011, 2013). Moreover, it has been shown that the roughness of nano-scaled implanted materials could benefit some specific tissue repair. Especially, the improved osteogenesis has been found on the specially modified nano-scaled material surfaces. It has been well recognized that the development of next generation of biomaterials will be definitely biologically inspired through physical and chemical nano-scaled modification of the materials. Bio-MEMS Bio-MEMS is an abbreviation for biomedical (or biological) microelectromechanical systems. Bio-MEMS focuses mainly on machine manufacture and microfabrication technologies for biological applications. Implantable microelectrodes are typical examples of Bio-MEMS applications in biomaterials. Those implantable microelectrodes are to record and send bioelectrical signals for disease studying, prostheses improving and clinical parameters monitoring through interfacing with the body’s nervous system. For instance, the applications of Bio-MEMS in biomaterials have promoted the development of Michigan probes that have been used in large-scaled recordings and network analysis of neuronal assemblies (Buzsa´ki 2004) and the Utah electrode array that has been used as a brain– computer interface for the paralyzed (Hochberg et al. 2006), which have not only increased electrodes per unit volume, but also addressed the problems of thick substrates, causing damage, triggering foreign-body reaction and electrode encapsulation via silicon and metals in the electrodes during implantation (Folch 2013). Moreover, extracellular microelectrodes have been patterned onto an inflatable helix-shaped plastic in cochlear implants to improve deep insertion and electrode-tissue contact for

Fig. 2 Nanoscale construction and growth of new organs (Stevens and George 2005)

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transduction of high-fidelity sounds (Arcand et al. 2004). Furthermore, thin and flexible substrates, integrated with microelectronics that adheres to the curvilinear surface of the heart by surface tension alone for measuring cardiac electrophysiology, could direct the cardiac patch (Viventi et al. 2010), and could also measure skin temperature and bioelectricity by electronic tattoos (Kim et al. 2011).

A Multidisciplined Teaching Reform of Biomaterials Course Above all, it is obvious that biomaterials is a multidisciplinary subject that not only concerns medicine, biology and materials, but also includes mechanical science, mechanics, computer science, automatic science, etc. Thus, to highlight this nature of biomaterials and address the educational challenge, we designed a multidisciplinary course that referred to not only traditional sciences, but also frontier sciences for biomaterials students with principles of a better understanding of the modern biomaterials science and meeting the requirements of the future development in this area. The designed course might be a model for solving multidisciplinary problem, especially the problem of biomaterials, which occurs in both learning and research. The challenges involved in both learning and research of biomaterials have a special need for a mutual cooperation of experts in different areas. Thus, this course was taught by more than one teacher during this educational reform. Dr. Xiaoming Li who is responsible for the Biomaterials course invited four experts, respectively, from four other schools of Beihang University, based on the current syllabus of this course, to form a teaching team together with himself. Each of those experts was arranged to lecture on one multidisciplined knowledge spot, which is involved in his/her own teach and research field. The information was shown in Table 1. Fifty senior undergraduate students coming from School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering in Beihang University attended the Biomaterials course. Those participants were expected to develop multidisciplinary innovative consciousness and ability to solve the problems of modern biomaterials science. Output developed by the course participants was presented to the person who is responsible for this course at the end of the curriculum and published as a paper. The work of the course participants was collaborative and utilized the specially designed courses that encourage wide knowledge, collaboration and synergy. The process was experiential, intense and fast paced—the program usually lasts half a day, principles of avoiding delaying the participants’ other courses. The main knowledge spots in the current syllabus of this course include the basic concept of biomaterials and their

Author's personal copy J Sci Educ Technol Table 1 The multidisciplined knowledge spots and the information of the teaching experts from other schools Multidisciplined knowledge spot

Affiliation of the teaching expert

Field of the teaching expert

Biomimetic preparation of biomaterials

School of chemistry

Chemistry

Chemical evaluation and computer simulation of biomaterials

School of computer science

Computer science

Mechanical evaluations and considerations of biomaterials

School of theoretical and applied mechanics

Theoretical and applied mechanics

Host responses to biomaterials and in vivo tracking and evaluations

School of automation science

Automation science

characteristics, design and synthesis of biomaterials, biomimetic preparation of biomaterials, mechanical evaluations and considerations of biomaterials, chemical evaluation and computer simulation of biomaterials, degradation of biomaterials in the biological environment, biocompatibility of biomaterials, interactions between biomaterials and cells, host responses to biomaterials and in vivo tracking and evaluations, etc. Before the year of 2014, all of the course content and the knowledge spots that were shown above were taught by the person who is responsible for this course (before teaching reform). During the course teaching of 2014, some experts from other schools of the University took part in teaching the main multidisciplined knowledge spots that were listed in Table 1. Before commencing to teach, the four experts from other schools and Dr. Xiaoming Li discussed the structure of the course in order to make the connections between the content that is taught by different persons more smooth and logical. After all the experts finished teaching, students were surveyed about various aspects of the course. This evaluation was essential to help demonstrate the effectiveness and viability of the teaching method. The questionnaires sought feedback on some specific aspects of the course. Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the responses of student to three questions about the course. The questionnaires of the students in 2014 year were compared with those of the students in 2013 year (before the teaching reform). It is obviously shown from Fig. 3 that after the teaching reform, students’ interest in this course increased significantly. Figure 4 shows that after the teaching reform, students understood much better the multidisciplined nature of biomaterials, which definitely benefits their biomaterials study and research. We can see from Fig. 5 that after the teaching reform, students learned much better the multidisciplined knowledge spots in the syllabus of this course. Furthermore, it is shown from Fig. 6 that the course was thought to much more benefit students’ future career after the teaching reform. Figure 7 shows that students are much more willing to recommend this course to others after the teaching reform. Moreover, specific ‘‘before and after’’ comments of two students also serve to illustrate the value of the course after the teaching reform.

Fig. 3 Student responses to the question: How about your interest in this course?

Fig. 4 Student responses to the question: What is the value of this course in helping you understanding multidisciplined nature of biomaterials?

Students 1 Before: It was difficult for me to explain my major to my friend or relative. And I was used to learn the knowledge from the curriculum arranged by the faculty.

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Fig. 5 Student responses to the question: What is the value of this course in helping you learning well the four multidisciplined knowledge spots? a Biomimetic preparation of biomaterials,

b Chemical evaluation and computer simulation of biomaterials, c Mechanical evaluations and considerations of biomaterials, d Host responses to biomaterials and in vivo tracking and evaluations

Fig. 6 Student responses to the question: What is the value of this course to your future career?

Fig. 7 Student responses to the question: Would you recommend this course to others?

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Students 1 after: First of all, I understand what biomaterials is much more clearly. I am aware well that biomaterials is multidisciplinary. I am hopeful to utilize the knowledge of other disciplines or to cooperate with the students of other disciplines to solve the problems of biomaterials. Students 2 Before: I will probably be a biomaterials engineer, and learning the curriculum within my major is more important. Students 2 after: Biomaterials is really multidisciplinary. It is very necessary to study related knowledge of other disciplines. It is very promising to open our minds to other disciplines so as to propose some innovative ideas for biomaterials.

Discussion Indeed, numerous professors from different disciplines have devoted themselves into the reform of the methods and environment of the current engineering education, which can be a powerful driving force to the development of each discipline. Boston Public Schools piloted an innovative engineering curriculum called Alpha-Robotics, the goal of which was to enable students to develop early awareness and interest in engineering and to structure opportunities for them to pursue this interest (Hosokawa and Robinson 2010). Although the Alpha-Robotics had been proved to be attractive to teachers and students, the curriculum mainly aimed at K-2 students who had little awareness about the engineering, resulting in lacking pertinence of the specialty. Another group, led by Keith M. Gardiner, launched a project involving 331 first-year engineering collage students to enable them to collaborate, communicate, organize and work in groups to plan, research and develop information (Gardiner 2012). Because the project graded students of the 56 groups to research the reports that were assembled virtually on different topics, such as recycling, fuel cells, climate change, and there were 50-min lecture sessions every Monday to provide brief introductions of the different engineering disciplines, the project should have been a good opportunity to raise the multidisciplinary awareness and understanding of the students, which, however, was not its original goal. Therefore, the project did not provide a detailed overview of each discipline, resulting in making the participant students initially puzzled or unadapted. In the new century, the rapid development in natural science suggests that more and more current issues are involving more than one discipline. Therefore, the multidisciplinary awareness is essential for each discipline. Recently, the Colorado School of Mines curriculum had developed a sequence of Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory courses, requiring students to

practice higher level thinking and encouraging them to reorganize knowledge and discover the connections among concepts in several courses (King et al. 1999). The course provided the participant students a platform to understand the concept of multidisciplines better in practice. However, the course mainly involved only three subjects, such as electrical circuits, fluid mechanics and stress analysis. Therefore, a small number of disciplines might greatly limit the breadth of the concept of multidisciplines. To improve the multidisciplinary awareness of the participants, we tried to make our designed course involve much more related disciplines, such as medicine, biology, materials, chemistry, computer science, theoretical and applied mechanics and automation science. On the other hand, another program, led by Design Science/Global Solutions Lab, focused on the interdisciplinary educational and strategic planning (Gabel 2010). The ages of those participants ranged from 15 to 55, with the average age of 24, and the professional background was different. Although the core of the program lies in improving the interdisciplinary awareness of participants with involving more disciplines, the program was only 7–9 days in length and 812 h per day. The program seemed to show a good result of multidisciplinary awareness improvement only in a short time, but might not last long. Since the cultivation of multidisciplinary awareness should penetrate into the minds of the students through long-term courses, we carefully designed the course planning and time schedule, making sure that the participants would spend 3 days per week at most working collaboratively in teams and the course would last for a whole academic year. Some similar courses have been applied in the biomedical engineering, which has become a model of the multidisciplinary science. Recently, focusing on the connection between the biomedical engineering and systems physiology, Kanter et al. (2001) had designed a course to improve biomedical engineering instructional environment in which students learned systems physiology subject matter coupled to its application. They aimed to tackle the unmet challenge of systems physiology subject matter learning and its application in hopes of facilitating the next generation of biomedical engineers. Another group, led by Tjaden (2007), also focused on strengthening the multidisciplinary awareness of biology for students. They launched a course in computational biology, the goal of which was to apply design and analysis of algorithms in molecular biology better. The course was only offered to both computer science and biology students and taught by the instructors only from those two disciplines. Although the two courses, discussed above, had continued over several years and they both focused on the overlapping disciplines between the biomedical engineering and other subjects, the involved disciplines might be inadequate, which might cause

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confining the multidisciplinary awareness of the students to narrow sphere. Considering this, during the design of our course, we had been keeping drawing our attention to the broad multidisciplinary awareness of our students. Our course involved several disciplines that included not only traditional sciences, but also frontier sciences. Thus, the course we designed here has benefited from educational development of different disciplines. However, successful design and execution of the multidisciplinary course, referring to so many disciplines, were really a big challenge. At the stage of course design, the toughest steps are curriculum planning and problem sets, which should not only cater to the key target of our course, but also be suitable for our biomaterials students. In addition, the course we designed should also arouse the enthusiasm of the students. Thus, based on this principle, we carefully designed the date and time schedule suitable for most of participants after referring the class schedules or experimental plans provided by every participant. Moreover, we invited professors with different professional backgrounds to offer some problems within their own scientific research so that we might find proper methods to resolve with the knowledge or process of biomaterials. In addition, some students who were getting through their own graduation projects also provided some difficult points. After considering these options thoroughly, we selected the related disciplines into our multidisciplinary course, which might help the participants to improve their own experimental content and technique. At the same time, we designed some different questions, which not only related to the biomaterials, but also referred to other disciplines. This idea was very important because the multidisciplinary system would be bound up with every participant students and could be helpful to keep enthusiasm of them through the course. We think that the success of the course depends on a combination of the main factors as follows: 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

Participants learned the knowledge beyond their own areas through the courses. The course focused on the real problems of the field of biomaterials. Before commencing to teach, all the teachers discussed the content and structure of the course in order to make the connections between the content that is taught by different persons more smooth and logical. The course contained lots of up-to-date multi-interdisciplinary content that is helpful for students to broaden their perspectives and open their minds, thereby motivating their innovative thinking. Participants were encouraged to develop real solutions to problems of biomaterials based on their knowledge or ideas, achieved from this course.

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6.

Participants were encouraged to find and present problems of biomaterials to the teachers, and then they discussed them together.

The primary contribution of this teaching reform is its focus on the development of real solutions to problems of biomaterials that really need multidisciplinary knowledge and multi-interdisciplinary innovative ideas. What is more, this course teaches students to realize that what is being worked on biomaterials, one of the new developing interdisciplinary studies, has never been worked before or is unable to be worked out by the students or specialists of the single field, and it is important to change their minds to take a positive attitude toward multilateral cooperations with persons of other fields. So, this course has gained high recognition and persistent supports from Beihang University. Since these kind of teaching reforms have never been tried in any school of this university before, the course is a challenge and prospect-based project, which is expected to pilot the instructional environment at this university and imitate educational reform approaches in other universities. Furthermore, we believe that this course could guide the instructional environment of biomaterials and that the teaching reform idea of this course could be applied to improve instructional quality for some other science subjects. We hope that this kind of educational modality could spread out to other disciplines and contribute to the fast development of modern multi-interdisciplinary science and technology.

Summary Some disciplines mentioned in this article, such as mechanical science, mechanics, computer science, automatic science, nanotechnology and CI, Bio-MEMS, are playing more and more important roles in the modern biomaterials science development. It is no doubt that modern biomaterials area has been involving much multidisciplinary knowledge and that its development needs more and more multi-interdisciplinary innovative idea. Thus, a multidisciplined teaching reform of biomaterials course for undergraduate students has been tried to meet the requirements of the modern biomaterials science development. This course was taught by more than one teacher during this educational reform. The person who is responsible for the Biomaterials course invited experts from four other schools of Beihang University, based on the current syllabus of this course, to form a teaching team together with himself. Each of those experts was arranged to teach one multidisciplined knowledge spot, in which his/her own teaching and research field are involved. After all the experts finished teaching, students


were surveyed about various aspects of the course. The questionnaires sought feedback on some specific aspects of the course. It has been shown that after the teaching reform, students’ interest in this course increased significantly. After the teaching reform, students understood much better the multidisciplined nature of biomaterials, which definitely benefits their biomaterials study and research. After the teaching reform, students learned much better the multidisciplined knowledge spots in the syllabus of this course. Furthermore, it has been shown that course was thought to much more benefit students’ future career after the teaching reform. Students are much more willing to recommend this course to others after the teaching reform. The course we designed is not simply a platform offering the book knowledge or an experiment skill. More importantly, the consciousness shift of participants is one of our main purposes. Some representative students think that it is very necessary to study related knowledge of other disciplines and that it is very promising to open our minds to other disciplines so as to propose some innovative ideas for biomaterials. These results from questionaries after the course should indicate significant achievement of the teaching reform. This course has gained high recognition and persistent supports from Beihang University. The idea of this course teaching reform might be also fit for the education and construction of some other disciplines. If you think this project is appropriate for your situation, please have a try. Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31370959), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 7142094), Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation (No. 141039), Program for New Century Excellent Talents (NCET) in University from Ministry of Education of China, State Key Laboratory of New Ceramic and Fine Processing (Tsinghua University), International Joint Research Center of Aerospace Biotechnology and Medical Engineering, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and the 111 Project (No. B13003).

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