BMEN E1001

Weekly 1.5 hour lecture weekly online quiz (10 questions, 30 minute time-limit) end of paper 10 page research paper (done in groups of 4)

Weekly problem sets that can be Psets or Essays. Essays are easy, Psets are not. Open book Midterm/Final, both with averages around 70-75%. A+ is not awarded in this class, unfortunately, though many students would have it!

I would not recommend this class. First off, pre-professional classes are no longer required. At the time I was registering for classes, pre-professional classes were still required, and I thought that this course would help me decide if I wanted to study BME. All this class consists of is a weekly ~1.5 hour lecture by someone in the BME department presenting his/her research followed by a super nit-picky online quiz about the lecture and an end-of-semester research paper. I would say about 75% of the time, the students had no idea what the lecturer was talking about, simply because the research was so in-depth and most of us in that class were still fresh out of high school! There were perhaps two good lecturers (good as in engaging and could articulate their research to someone who did not know a lot about their field) but other than that, most of us dreaded going to lectures. Essentially, during the whole lecture, people are vigorously copying down notes, which they are allowed to use in quizzes, even though we don't understand anything we are copying down. The other group of people are just browsing on the their computers because they will get the quiz answers from their friends. The structure of the quizzes infuriated me the most. I would say about half of our classes cheated on them. You are only supposed to use the notes you took in class during quizzes. However, pretty…

The structure of this class makes for a very manageable A. Guest lecturers generally lecture at a high level and it's tough to stay awake, so most people figure out that it's pointless to go to lecture. Just find the good TA section and write down every single word and diagram the TAs put on the board and make sure your homeworks reflect what they tell you. The review sessions prior to the midterm and final are extremely helpful. I did a lot of Wikipedia research for this class and printed a lot of material from it for the midterm and final and it was helpful to me. The most helpful thing, though, is to have tidy recitation notes and papers and psets that are at least an 8/10, which can be hard at times. I did all the homeworks the night before and it was totally manageable. If you are spending more than 2 hours on a homework you're spending too much time. How to study for the midterm and final: Go to the review sessions, and for the day of the test bring a binder with all your notes and graded homeworks and all of the supplementary material that Dr. Wald posts on courseworks. Often he takes some questions from the supplemental essays and papers but the answers aren't so hard to find. Just be organized. I learned a lot of really interesting things about BME and just Medicine and Surgery in general in this class but it was more of a fun class for me than a serious one. Take it…

(1) Weekly online quiz (60%) - Multiple choice or true/false. Tricky questions that can be tough for those who skip lectures constantly. Time is not an issue, but the style takes a while to get used to and becomes much easier as the semester progresses. 9 in total and lowest grade dropped (2) Paper on a bioengineering technique and final presentation in the form of a powerpoint (40%) Very open-ended and free in choosing what to write about, but nerve-racking in terms of presenting in front of the whole class (14 minute time limit, for which points may be deducted if overtime). 15 pages maximum for the report, not including diagrams. No final exam!!! Getting an A as a final grade can be kind of challenging, but not impossible. If you are willing to put in the effort, it usually pays off and you will do relatively well (B+ or A-)

Weekly homework assignments (9 of 11 are actually graded) are not too challenging, just attend recitation. One midterm and one final, both of moderate difficulty due to the fine points they ask you to recall.

This class serves as a reasonable introduction into biomedical engineering and every week, invites lecturers from various sub-fields (biomechanics, cell and tissue, imaging) to talk about their current research projects. Usually does not take the full time allotted by the registrar (Monday 4:10-6:40 pm), except for the last two classes. If you are thinking of a career in medicine and BME, then you will find most of the topics, especially neurobiology and cardiac catheters, to be very interesting. The best ones were usually short, concise, and condensed, although a few of them can be so unnecessarily long, dragged out, and boring that everybody quickly stops paying attention towards the end; the problem is that the lecture room is so dark that you fall asleep when extremely tired by the end of a long day of classes and the Wi-fi connection also is very tempting. Not bad for fulfilling the pre-professional requirement given the light workload. As for Clark, he acts as a moderator and writes all the quizzes, for which he may decide to accept multiple answers if you can convince him that the questions are ambiguous and mislead you in your reasoning. Very flexible, nice, and caring prof who answers emails promptly and always tries his best to make you understand the material better.

My advice; take this class if you don't want to work too hard or need to fulfill a requirement. Do not take it if you want to learn or experience the field of BME. The general consensus about Professor Wald is true; he appears to be a nice guy but is extremely boring, seems to be oblivious to what is going on, and drones on pointlessly for the first 45-60 minutes of class. The TA's essentially run the class, and it is their recitations that matter. For the weekly homework, simply regurgitate what the TA's tell you, add a fair bit of your own work (wikipedia will do the trick), and make sure its not too short. This may just be a personal opinion, but I found most of the guest lectures to be boring, as well. They were too topic-specific, and only gave you an idea of a specific project, not the opportunities of the field or the exciting research being done. Finally, although the midterm and final were not difficult, per se (they were both open-note), they included a lot of minutiae that were at best mentioned in passing. Bring as many notes and printouts as you can, and you'll do okay.

online five question multiple choice quiz a week; final group paper and presentation on a biomedical engineering method

Professor Wald was sweet but senile. His lectures were boring, but some of his obscure facts actually showed up on the finals. The guest lectures, while some were interesting, were basically pointless as for grades -- the recitations were what made up the course. For the homework essays, repeat what the TAs said word for word, plus a small paragraph of wikipedia research and you'll get a 10. (Don't worry about the word limit)