Dear Eliot. Thank you for your question. I am not sure which area of teaching are you interested in. I enclose two articles that I have written on methods for teaching anatomy. The first paper is a review of the use of 3D models in teaching anatomy.

As you can see, this is a review and covers several models used in teaching 3D anatomy. It also brings evidence for their educational value in undergraduate medical courses. The second paper compares two methods of teaching surface anatomy. I hope these articles help you.

Best regards Prof S Azer

It is the context of the methods and methods of teaching and techniques of activating the semester changing according to several criteria, perhaps the most important is the teaching position.

It is the way the teacher teaches materials and on his way to achieve the desired educational goals.It is also the means, tools and procedures that he uses to help him in his task.It is also the atmosphere in the classroom to help - in an orderly and sequential manner - to reach acceptable learning outcomes in the light of available possibilities.

Biomimetics lies at the intersection of many disciplines and there in lies it's strength and weakness. Strength because it brings so many people together from engineers to biologists. But the area is is vast it is difficult to develop any tool that is useful for all. I found most tools such as flash cards to be useless in our context. They are good learning tool but not for practicing engineers. Asknatuire.org is a good site to check for organisms, their properties, and their possible application in biomimetics.

Also, morphological approach may be helpful in early state of design. Refer to the paper below.

Conference Paper IMECE2016-650121 LIFE CENTERED DESIGN USING MORPHOLOGICAL CHART

Dear Pr. Samy A. Azer,

Thank you very much for your response,

To answer your question, as an engineer in biology (from AgroParisTech) and a PhD candidate in engineering design (at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers), I'm teaching biomimetics to both product design engineers and engineers specialized in biology.

If I try to summarize the references' advice in a few words I would say that the visual and, more specifically, spatial organisation along with its functional sense are great assets for the understanding, learning and recollection of biological information such as surface anatomy, is that correct ?

We are actually deeply interested in spatial approach and multi-level organisation as most, if not all, biological models are structured at multiple scales.

To realign my answer with the initial question, do you know any teaching tools that can be used to make students realize the criticality of spatial and hierarchical reasoning when considering biological models ?

Thanks again,

Best Regards,

Eliot Graeff

Dear Dr. Mariappan Jawaharlal,

Thank you very much for your answer,

It is indeed a vast field and I agree with all your observations regarding the teaching difficulties.

I actually do use AskNature as a teaching tool but, despite its clear interest, I feel that it also gives a highly restrictive view of biomimetics' practice.

If I have to teach students to actually become biomimetics' practitioners, which is the ultimate goal, it appears crucial to find ways to transmit the underlining mechanism to them, not only the easy way.

But, to do so, the relationship between biological and engineering knowledge appears fundamental, leading us to other pitfalls.

To precise my initial question, on those pitfalls, representing the shift in the students' mindset, do you have any advices, materials or tools leading to a better understanding of biomimetics in practice ?

Thanks again for your response,

Best regards,

Eliot Graeff

Dear Dr. Yousif Yaqoob Shahtha ,

Thank you very much for your response,

I'm not sure I properly understand your answer. The multiplicity of aspects linked with teaching is crucial and I've understood the need to be aware of those various aspects in order to align means and goals for a given educational objective, but I have trouble linking it with the teaching tools in biomimetics.

Do you have any precise example ?

Thanks again,

Best Regards,

Eliot Graeff

Dear Eliot,

I would suggest several tools depending on the background of your students and their training level (undergraduate, graduate). I would also take into consideration the number of credits of your course as a clue of how deep you can go into teaching and implementing any of these tools. You already mentioned AskNature but there are other databases such as DANE (developed by the Design Intelligence Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology) or IDEA-INSPIRE (by IDeaS Lab, Indian Institute of Science) that might be useful. You also have Language-based tools such as the Engineering-to-Biology Thesaurus (developed by the Design Engineering Lab, Oregon State University). For the abstraction of biological processes and functions I use the Energy System Diagrams developed by H.Odum and that I described in this paper (Ecosystems biomimetics: ecological systems diagrams for characterization of environmental performance of buildings). During the transfer stage I use environmental modelling tools to assess the design solutions. I specifically use STELLA but similar results might be achieved with MATLAB and complemented with 'traditional' modeling tools such as AutoCAD, Revit, and others.

At the same time that these tools are being used I conduct creative discussions and iterations to complement the design process.

I hope this helps. I'll be happy to talk more about biomimetic design approaches if interested!

Best,

Mercedes