1. 1
Building an elearning website for biomedical engineering education
H.Q Huy1, N.D Thuan1 and V.D Hai1
1
Department of Electronic Technology and Boimedical Engineering,
Hanoi University of Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
Abstract— This paper introduces the process of constructing Elearning for biomdedical engineeering is not a new
the elearning website for Biomedical Engineering (BME), concept [2] but elearning has just been implemented at
including the process of building electronic lectures and online Hanoi University of Technology through internet by
examinations for the course. accessing to elearning website. This website enable
Biomedical Engineering is a new discipline in Vietnam, there
were only three universities offer undergraduate degrees in 2005.
lecturers to provide lessions intergrating multimedia such as
In addition, this field requires a relatively extensive amount of image, audio, video..in order to facilitate education and
knowledge of different areas such as informatics, electronics, study: exploiting, sharing material, lectures; presenting and
biology, physics.. and it is growing rapidly, it is required to apply illustrating complicated problems such as definitions,
new method in education. operating principles of biomedical equipment, biological
In this paper, we introduce the process of building the elearning processes, medical image systems...
website, including selecting appropriate elearning technology; The website also assists lecturers and students with
apppy it to form some electronic lectures; online student doing research through meeting and communicating
assessment; conduct surveys and collect feedback about website domestic and foreign specialists and professors in the form
and courses.
This website is based mainly on open source softwares, a
of online –training or video – conferencing.
becoming popular trend in education . It has proved appropriate
and successful in terms of educating biomedical engineering,
especially in the advanced programme carried out at Department II. CONTENT
of Electronic Technology and Biomedical engineering, Hanoi
University of Technology for the first time, in cooperation with the 1. General Information about Elearning
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Elearning (electronic learning): This term indicates a
Keywords— : elearning, biomedical engineering, education variety of applications and processes like learning via the
website, learning on the computer, virtual classes and digital
connection including delivering course contents, documents
I. INTRODUCTION to attendants via the internet, intranet/ extranet
(LAN/WAN), audio and video tapes, interactive television,
Biomedical engineering is only available at just some big CD-ROM, and other forms of electronic learning
universities such as Hanoi University of Technology, materials.[2]
Vietnam National University – Hochiminh city (University Today, with the convergence of computer and
of Technology, International University), Institute of communication, elearning is defined more directly as
Military Techonology … and at some related departments learning via the internet and web technology.
such as biomedical informatics biomedical engineering For learners:
physics, biochemistry, biomaterials at some other • Elearning supports the process of individual studying
universities and colleges. At Hanoi University of which allows learners to have their own studying timetable
Technology, Biomedical Engineering was first implemented and studying methods. Learners can actively adjust the
in 1999, with the aim of meeting the essential demand from study pace to ease tension and increase efficiency.
society, especially from the Ministry of Health, of which Furthermore, interaction and exchanging ideas improve the
Department of Electronic Technology and Biomedical study efficacy.
Engineering is in charge. [1] For lecturers:
Because it is a new discipline and its lecturing materials • Lecturers can easily monitor students. Elearning
and references are limited, it is necessary to take measure to allows the automatic saving of data on the host computer.
share lectures, materials beetwen lecturers and students, as The data will be updated when learners access the
well as to exchange experience in educating and researching programme. Lecturers can assess learners by requiring them
among Vietnamese education institutions or with foreign to answers exam questions and considering the amount of
universities which have coporation in training and eduction
(such as in advanced programme) [1].

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time taken to finish the exam. This helps lecturers evaluate At present, Moodle has 804,806 users officially
fairly learners’ performance. registering at the host website, roughly 50,000 websites
2. Structure of Elearning System with 30,036,963 users from 209 different countries over the
world, among them Open University – the biggest with over
452,483 learners and 19.223 courses. Moodle has supported
79 languages including Vietnamese.
Fig. 1 Elearning system model
Including :
* Learning is mostly via the internet, using World Wide
Web (WWW) such as elearning website.
* A very important element of the system is the Learning
Management System (LMS), including various modules,
making the studying convenient and easily, exploiting the Fig. 2 Hệ quản trị học tập LMS
advantages of the internet, like: forum to exchange ideas
among class members, module to carry out a survey of an LMS is intergrated in the elearning website called
issue, testing and evaluation module, online chatting BME Elearning Website . It has the following functions:
module, flash module…
3. Construction of elearning website
Since school year 2007-2008, Hanoi University of
Technology has swifted from education on a yearly basis to
the one on a credit-based, meanwhile, carried out the
advanced programme of biomedical engineering. Subject
contents are based on those of USA universities having the
discipline of biomedical engineering [3], especially the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Biomedical engineering students are educated in basic
knowledge of the general programme, basic knowledge of
the discipline of Telecommunication Electronics and
Information Technology and specialistic knowledge of
Biomedical engineering
Many approaches, softwares can satisfy the requirement
of such elearning website but we choose Moodle [4] Fig. 3 Function of LMS
because :
Moodle is an open source software: the university does The technology used to contruct Moodle is the script
not depend on any commercial software. [5] [6] language PHP, an open source language running on
Moodle support SCORM : SCORM is one of the different operating system like: Windows, Linux, Mac OS
greatest achievements elearning community has gained X… Moodle can run on various web services such as
over years, ensuring the inheritance and reusing Apache, IIS (Internet Information System), Tomcat,
resources. Personal Web Server…. Moreover, it supports different
Moodle is free. database systems like MySQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle,
MS SQL Server… However, Apache and MySQL are more

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encourged because they can run on many operating systems
like: Linux, Windows… and they are free.
Fig. 4 Moodle holds the largest LMS segment in the world
(www.zacker.org)
Moodle is designed to facilitate the principle of social
education (social constructionist). Moodle has a large
amount of flexible functions to help tele–education, and Fig. 6 Home page Medical Imaging System course
allow Vietnamese students to learn from or listen to foreign
professors. In the home page on each course, there are link to
4. Building electronic lectures and online tests lectures and resources of the whole course such as slides,
The content of electronic lectures will be built by files, quizzes, assigments… and other activities like forum,
lectures based on the requirement of the subject and upload chat, wiki…
to elearning website.
Fig. 5 Home page of BME Elearning Website
This process will be supported by available attached tools
Fig. 7 A lecture in Medical Imaging Systems course
of the web. In addition, lecturers can use other softwares
like Reload (http://www.reload.ac.uk/scormplayer.html) ,
For example, in the above lecture flash which is
eXe (http://exelearning.org) to create and pack lectures in
developed by students majoring in biomedical engineering
accordance with SCORM [10].
under the guidance of relative lecturer to simulate strcuture
This paper will not descbire the process of constructing
and operation of X-ray machines.
in details, but the subsequent tools will be very good to
The elearning website will allow teleeducation via
create electronic lectures:
video conference in the same way applied to the subject of
- Slides (in the form of ppt, pdf..)
Biomechanics by Professor Benjamin S. Kelly (Baylor
- Html pages, audio , video, flash file, SCORM
University, USA). During the studying period, professor
package…
and students were at classroom in Vietnam for the first and

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last two weeks and studying in virtual class via the internet III. CONCLUSIONS
for the twelve middle weeks. 1. The elearning website has already constructed and
To create online tests, lecturers can use Moodle or used by Department of Electronic Technology and
other softwares like Reload, Hot Potatoes... The online test Biomedical Engineering, bringing tremendous efficiency to
can be taken via the Internent or LAN (in this case LAN is education process: contents of some main subjects have
LAN of the computer room). Tests include questions in the been finished. Students can evaluate their studying
following forms: performance everytime, everywhere, regardless of studying
- Multiple choices, one right choice; multiple timetable, and increase the probability of interaction
choices, multiple right choices, between them and lecturers.
- Filling in the blank; Matching (compare) 2. The website needs constantly developing and
- Calculation, description (writing answers) … upgrating in order to promote advantages of elearning as
well as to meet the specific educational demand of this
discipline.
1. N. D. Thuan et all. (2004) Method to build and develop a
new discipline in university, Science and Technogoly
Journal, ISSN 0868-3980
2. Alfred C. H. Yu, Billy Y. S. YiuTowards (2009)
Integrative Learning in Biomedical Engineering
3. ABET Accedited Engineering Programs,
http://www.abet.org/accredited_programs.shtml
4. Moodle at http://moodle.org
5. European Virtual Campus for Biomedical Engineering
EVICAB at http://www.evicab.eu
6. Marvin Croy, Ron Smelser. (2009) LMS Evaluation:
Moodle Pilot Faculty Response, UNCC, USA.
7. P. Inchingolo, , F. Londero, and F. Vatta (2007) The E-
HECE elearningExperience in BME Education, Medicon
2007, IFMBE Proceedings 16, pp. 1107–1110
8. William H. Rice IV (2006) Moodle elearning course
Fig. 8 Quiz in Health Information System course development. Packt Publishing, UK
9. Jason C (2005) Using Moodle, : Teaching with the
Popular Open Source Course Management System.
After learners finish the test, the result will be O'Reilly, USA
informed, extracted and saved in the form of exel, text, 10. M.J. Smith, G. Salvendy. (2007) Efficient Creation of
html, xml… file. The grading is automatic and correct. This Multi Media elearning Modules, Human Interface, Part II,
HCII, LNCS 4558, pp. 457–465.
kind of test can combine with oral test, project reporting or
11. J. Flacke. (2009) Combining Synchronous and
paper test. Asynchonous elearning tools in distance education-
experiences from a course for develpoing countries,
ISPRS 2009 : Workshop commisions VI 1and 2, Potsdam,
Germany.
12. Horton, W. K. (2000) Designing Web-Based Training:
How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime.
Wiley
Author: H.Q Huy
Institute: Hanoi University of Technology
Street: No 1, Dai Co Viet Street
City: Hanoi
Country: Vietnam
Email: hqhuy-fet@mail.hut.edu.vn
Author: N.D Thuan
Institute: Hanoi University of Technology
Street: No 1, Dai Co Viet Street
City: Hanoi
Country: Vietnam
Email: ndthuan-qlkh@mail.hut.edu.vn
Fig.9 Survey about Health Information System course Author: V.D Hai
Institute: Hanoi University of Technology
Street: No 1, Dai Co Viet Street
In each subject, lecturers can create survey forms to City: Hanoi
collect assessment ideas and comments from students in Country: Vietnam
terms of subject contents and teaching methods. Email: vdhai-fet@mail.hut.edu.vn