Department of Physics and School of Education, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2013 Jun 1;12(2):250-61. doi: 10.1187/cbe.12-09-0142.
Undergraduate educational settings often struggle to provide students with authentic biologically or medically relevant situations and problems that simultaneously improve their understanding of physics. Through exercises and laboratory activities developed in an elective Physics in Biomedicine course for upper-level biology or pre-health majors at Portland State University, we aim to teach fundamental physical concepts, such as light absorption and emission and atomic energy levels, through analysis of biological systems and medical devices. The activities address the properties of electromagnetic waves as they relate to the interaction with biological tissue and make links between physics and biomedical applications such as microscopy or laser eye surgery. We report on the effect that engaging students in tasks with actual medical equipment has had on their conceptual understanding of light and spectroscopy. These initial assessments indicate that students' understanding improves in some areas as a result of taking the course, but gains are not uniform and are relatively low for other topics. We also find a promising "nonshift" in student attitudes toward learning science as a result of taking the course. A long-term goal of this work is to develop these materials to the extent that they can eventually be imported into an introductory curriculum for life sciences majors.
本科教育环境通常难以为学生提供真实的生物或医学相关情境和问题，同时提高他们对物理的理解。通过波特兰州立大学生物学或医学预科高年级选修的《生物医学物理》课程中开发的练习和实验室活动，我们旨在通过分析生物系统和医疗设备来教授基本的物理概念，如光吸收和发射以及原子能级。这些活动探讨了电磁波的特性，以及它们与生物组织相互作用的关系，并将物理与生物医学应用（如显微镜或激光眼科手术）联系起来。我们报告了让学生参与实际医疗设备任务对他们对光和光谱学的概念理解的影响。这些初步评估表明，学生在某些领域的理解因修读该课程而有所提高，但并非所有主题都取得一致和显著的进步。我们还发现，由于修读该课程，学生对学习科学的态度出现了有希望的“非转移”。这项工作的长期目标是开发这些材料，以便最终可以将其纳入生命科学专业的入门课程。
