How to overcome obstacles you haven’t encountered yet-Orthodocs

Dear incoming sophomores,

This year In Biomedical Innovations we had a DAP project where we focused on the shoulder joint and learned how the muscles and bones worked. We also learned the names and locations of all the shoulder joints components and crucial parts. We then went ahead and created a device that would protect our joint, which is what you all are going to do. Here are a few tips from us to help you complete this project without much struggles.

During this project it is extremely important that you communicate with your teammates, a miscommunication can cause a setback. Communicating with your group is a must, you have to in order to come up with and idea for your project. Along the way you are going to face problems such as oh we didn’t design this correctly, or oh we forgot we need certain information in order to complete a certain part of the project, this is where you are all going to have to work together and instead of stressing out, talk it out. Come up with another plan and it will get fixed. If you have problems with someone in your group leave that outside, focus on the task at hand.

The DAP was a lot more complicated than what I was expecting but it definitely taught  me many things that I will share with you. During this process I highly recommend you are informed on the subject you are trying to protect and keep from getting injured. When you are first starting out do not focus on the tiny details, it is better to have a broad design so that you can then build up on it as you get customer interviews and you truly know what is needed and wanted by the customer you are trying to sell your product to. Make sure everyone has a clear understanding of what you will be making because of someone doesn’t understand they won’t be able to truly help make improvements. The last thing I want to say is make sure everyone has a say in the final design, do not solely pick one idea and stick to that, add aspects and features from other designs your group had in order to make it not only appealing but possibly more effective for your customer.

This year in Biomed, it’s time to expand to resources that you thought you would never use or are too complicated to use. For example, throughout this year, we learn a lot of the anatomy and do dissections which is very interesting and the information is given to you in class. For the DAP project, you’re on your own and need to find good resources. Throughout this experience, I have learned how to use EBSCOHost which is a very good resource to find peer reviewed articles as well as scholarly articles that can be used for research with fantastic statistics and diagrams to consider to add to your presentation. Advice that I suggest is attending the Make-O-Rama event to showcase your protective gear and interviewing the participants to get some good quotes to add to your presentation to promote your protective gear in a good way. For resources that I suggest on using is EBSCOhost which I mentioned earlier which is an incredible resource that will save your time and find good resources.

Here is an example of testing your protective gear on the Make-O-Rama event.

Sophomore year is a year of discovery where you find out how you manage your work and how some of your peers manage their work. The year itself is full of a lot of studying, maintaining binders and notebooks and preparing for junior year.

A big component of the DAP presentation is how well you are able to present yourself as a professional student. Having to present yourself as a professional student can be difficult because of all the other classes other than biomes you have to worry about.

Something that helped my group and I stay put together was making sure that our Google drives were organized. Being the team leader, I created a DAP folder in my Biomedical Innovations folder that I shared with my group members. Within that folder, I created other sub folders such as Research, Marketing, Pictures, Class Documents and many more.

The reason as to why this helped OrthoDocs was because we didn’t have to waste time looking for a certain document on our drive or we didn’t have to worry about not being able to access a certain document. This project is lengthy and can cause a good amount of stress, so staying organized helps with time management and collaboration between your peers.