Most engineering courses do not occupy class time with playground antics. But in BME 260, students have the opportunity to bring out their inner child.
The course, Devices for People With Disabilities, offers students a chance to design and build projects that will improve the lives of disabled people, including children.
Seniors Twinkle Gupta, Julianna Swanson and Amanda Zimmerman approached their project hoping to increase the ability of their client—a two-year-old boy who is immobile from the waist down—to interact with others.
To begin, they decided that they needed something with broad appeal. The ball maze they created, inspired by a similar one at UNC, consists of an intertwining series of chutes encased in plexiglass. The children can entertain themselves by sending golf balls through the chutes, which is fun for both the boy and his classmates.
“The kids will have some control over where [the golf ball] goes, and they will be able to gain points, which gives it a competitive nature,” Gupta said.
Innovative projects with a community interactive element have brought the class wide popularity. Enrollment is now contingent on a lottery system, and the course is limited to 18.
“We’ve kept the class size small to keep up the quality of the material for everybody,” said Larry Bohs, assistant research professor of biological engineering, who leads the course with colleagues Kevin Caves and Richard Goldberg.
Each group of two to three students works with a client and is shapes its project according to that person’s needs. While some of the projects students design are also suitable for children with normal abilities, others are more individualized.
The 3-D Sound Station, created by seniors George Crowell, Jon Weiss and Mike Chu, is for a developmentally delayed and severely vision-impaired boy. The device plays to the boy’s strengths by using different audio files to stimulate his mind, including clips of his parents’ voices and multiple styles of music. Depending on the boy’s needs, his teacher will be able to switch between settings. Pressing a frisbee-sized button activates the device, allowing him to associate his actions with the sounds produced and effectively increasing his interaction with the outside world.
“We wanted to make a device that is entertaining for him to use and that will also function as a therapy device,” Crowell said. He also noted that the station’s surround sound speakers, adjustable height and ability to tilt will increase its effectiveness.
One of the elements of the course that most excites students is the chance to see their work make a positive impact on another person’s life.
“I have done several projects in biomedical and engineering areas in the past, but this is the first time that I’m going to build something and actually see it used to help people,” Gupta said.
Weiss agreed, noting “Since it’s a design class, we get a chance to put everything we’ve learned in our engineering classes at Duke and apply it.”
In addition to developing technical expertise, students improve their communication skills by learning how to be more respectful of people with disabilities. Learning the “People-First Language” encourages them to speak more carefully and avoid offending or misrepresenting people who have different physical and mental capacities. Primarily, students learn not to say things that are unnecessary when describing their clients.
“If you don’t need to say that someone is in a wheelchair, then you emphasize the same characteristics that you’d use to describe any other person,” explained Goldberg, adjunct assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “In the context of our class, if there’s a woman with cerebral palsy, we talk about elements of her disability that are important to developing the project, not the other ways in which CP affects her life.”
Other projects, aimed at helping adults in the Raleigh-Durham area, include a customized book stand for a woman whose eyes impair her ability to read and a special toenail clipper for a woman with cerebral palsy.
Goldberg also points to fostering ties with the community as one of the experiences students gain from the class. Many clients have benefitted from their devices for years, Goldberg said, adding that since the class began in 1995, 15 projects have have won awards on the national level.
“It feels much more real-world than other classes,” Swanson said. “I think every senior should take it. I love it!”
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