Practical Aspects of Creating an Interdisciplinary Nanotechnology Laboratory Course for Freshmen

Winkelmann, Kurt

doi:10.1166/jne.2009.011

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…We thus believe that, with this course, students are more alert to the use of AFM as a powerful scientific tool and also as an educational tool. The use of AFM for nanotechnology education at other universities has already been proven to be successful (6,39,47). However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time in which the training was not restricted to imaging, further extending to force spectroscopy measurements.…”

Section: How We Teach: Classroom and Laboratory Research Projectsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The education challenge still is to bridge disciplinary and geographical barriers, developing a new framework to reverse the education pyramid from general knowledge to specialization. Major research universities in the United States have begun to implement multidisciplinary programs in nanosciences, involving physical sciences, life sciences, and engineering (5,47,50). In 2004, education in nanotechnology has also been defined as a priority at the European Union level, but only recently nanoscience education became part of curricula in several universities and high schools in Europe (22,28).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Taking nanomedicine teaching into practice with atomic force microscopy and force spectroscopy

Carvalho

Freitas

Santos

2015

Advances in Physiology Education

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Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a useful and powerful tool to study molecular interactions applied to nanomedicine. The aim of the present study was to implement a hands-on atomic AFM course for graduated biosciences and medical students. The course comprises two distinct practical sessions, where students get in touch with the use of an atomic force microscope by performing AFM scanning images of human blood cells and force spectroscopy measurements of the fibrinogen-platelet interaction. Since the beginning of this course, in 2008, the overall rating by the students was 4.7 (out of 5), meaning a good to excellent evaluation. Students were very enthusiastic and produced high-quality AFM images and force spectroscopy data. The implementation of the hands-on AFM course was a success, giving to the students the opportunity of contact with a technique that has a wide variety of applications on the nanomedicine field. In the near future, nanomedicine will have remarkable implications in medicine regarding the definition, diagnosis, and treatment of different diseases. AFM enables students to observe single molecule interactions, enabling the understanding of molecular mechanisms of different physiological and pathological processes at the nanoscale level. Therefore, the introduction of nanomedicine courses in bioscience and medical school curricula is essential.

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Section: How We Teach: Classroom and Laboratory Research Projectsmentioning

confidence: 94%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking nanomedicine teaching into practice with atomic force microscopy and force spectroscopy

Carvalho

Freitas

Santos

2015

Advances in Physiology Education

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“…The panel discussion activity is the most recent addition to Florida Tech's Introduction to Nanoscience and Technology laboratory (Winkelmann, 2009;Winkelmann, Mantovani & Brenner, 2008). This one-credit course is offered to freshmen students majoring in science or engineering during the spring semester.…”

Section: Activity Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning About the Societal Impacts of Nanotechnology Through Role Playing

Winkelmann¹

2013

j nano educ

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A classroom activity introduces students to the ethical issues related to nanotechnology. Students play the roles of business owners, school administrators and local residents as they debate real life issues which include the use of nanotechnology for (1) collecting consumer shopping data, (2) enhancing campus security through increased surveillance and (3) manufacturing nanodevices despite potentially adverse effects on the environment. Each student receives an assigned role for one of the three scenarios and researches the topic. During the debate and in a written assignment, the student provides facts to support the character's viewpoint. Students also reflect on the topics themselves (not as their characters). Each debate lasted about forty-five minutes and included participation from the audience. Student comments taken from the written assignment and a video recording of the debate provide evidence that this assignment successfully encouraged them to critically think about how nanotechnology can affect their lives. The assignment was inspired by the television show, "Nanotechnology: The Power of Small."

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“…There have been numerous efforts to introduce nanotechnology in the engineering and science curriculum [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. In this paper, we report a first-year seminar course focused on introduction to nanoengineering and its ethical and societal impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing Nanoengineering and Nanotechnology to the First Year Students Through an Interactive Seminar Course

Raza¹,

Raza²

2013

j nano educ

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We report a first year seminar course on nanoengineering, which provides a unique opportunity to get exposed to the bottom-up approach and novel nanotechnology applications in an informal small class setting early in the undergraduate engineering education. Our objective is not only to introduce the fundamentals and applications of nanoengineering but also the issues related to ethics, environmental and societal impact of nanotechnology used in engineering. To make the course more interactive, laboratory tours for microfabrication facility, microscopy facility, and nanoscale laboratory at the University of Iowa are included, which inculcate the practical feel of the technology. The course also involves active student participation through weekly student presentations, highlighting topics of interest to this field, with the incentive of "nano is everywhere!" Final term papers submitted by the students involve a rigorous technology analysis through various perspectives. Furthermore, a student based peer review process is developed which helps them to improve technical writing skills, as well as address the ethical issues of academic honesty while reviewing and getting introduced to a new aspect of the area presented by their colleagues. Based on the chosen paper topics and student ratings, the student seemed motivated to learn about the novel area introduced to them through theoretical, computational and experimental aspects of the bottom-up approach.

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Practical Aspects of Creating an Interdisciplinary Nanotechnology Laboratory Course for Freshmen

Cited by 13 publications

References 16 publications

Taking nanomedicine teaching into practice with atomic force microscopy and force spectroscopy

Taking nanomedicine teaching into practice with atomic force microscopy and force spectroscopy

Learning About the Societal Impacts of Nanotechnology Through Role Playing

Introducing Nanoengineering and Nanotechnology to the First Year Students Through an Interactive Seminar Course

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