A remote laboratory course on experimental human physiology using wearable technology

Abstract

To help educators deliver their physiology laboratory courses remotely, we developed an inexpensive, customizable hardware kit along with freely available teaching resources. We based the course design on four principles that should allow students to conductinsightful experiments on different physiological systems. First, the experimental setup should not be constrained to laboratory environments.Second, students should be able to take this course without prior coding and electronics experience. Third, the hardwarekit should be relatively inexpensive, and all other resources should be freely available. Fourth, all resources should be customizablefor educators. The hardware kit consists of commercially available electronic components, with a microcontroller as its hub (Arduinofriendly). All measurement systems can be assembled without soldering. The hardware kit is cost-effective (approximately the cost ofa textbook) and can be customized depending upon instructional needs. All software is freely available, and we share all necessarycodes in open-access online repositories for simple use and customizability. All lab manuals and additional video tutorials are alsofreely available online and customizable. In our particular course, we have weekly asynchronous physiology lectures and one synchronouslaboratory session, where students can get help with their equipment. In this article, we only focus on the novel and opensourcelaboratory part of the course. The laboratory includes four units [data acquisition, ECG, electromyography (EMG), activity classification]and one final project. It is our intent that these resources will allow other educators to rapidly implement their own remotephysiology laboratories or to extend our work into other pedagogical applications of wearable technology