Monday 12 March 2012

Choosing Our Topic


Based on the recommendation of our course convenor, Cath Young, our group chose the topic of Aussie Current, an electrophysical modality invented by an Australian, Alex Ward. Although we had very little idea about what Aussie Current actually was, we were interested when Cath told us that if we could understand the main article, we would have a good handle on our Bioinstrumentation subject. This gave us pause. Would it be beyond our understanding? We decided it was a good way to multi-task, research and study at the same time. 

Topic in hand we started where most students do – we consulted “Dr Google”.  When we entered Aussie Current into the search engine it was less than productive, resulting in pages for Aussie Home Loans, credit cards and stories from A Current Affair.  To our surprise, the very first search result was Aussie Current Blogspot – an assignment from last year’s cohort.  Resisting temptation we avoided looking at this web page lest we were biased in our own exploration of the topic.

inventor of Aussie Current and 
Senior Lecturer at  La Trobe University,
 Victoria, Australia.

With little result from searching the term “Aussie Current”, we decided to search for the inventor, Alex Ward, instead.  This returned more promising results and we were able to access his La Trobe University staff profile, complete with email address and list of published journal articles and books. It made sense then to contact Alex directly, with the hope that he could point us in the right direction to start our research. Alex was not surprised to hear that we had been experiencing difficulty finding articles. He was very helpful and suggested we search Pubmed by keywords, using ‘Burst Modulated Alternating Current’ and ‘kHz Frequency Alternating Current’. He also recommended searching for another researcher, Yocheved Laufer who has also done some work with Aussie Current.


Armed with Alex’s text book, which we borrowed from the library, and relevant journal articles we prepared to start understanding Aussie Current and the content of our Bioinstrumentation course. 




Alex Ward's textbook.

References

Robertson, V.R. Ward, A. Low, J. & Reed, A. (2006). Electrotherapy Explained Principles and Practice (4th ed). London, United Kindom: Elsiver.


1 comment:

  1. Lovely work E, K, and J. This is the ideal way to introduce your topic - thanks. CY

    ReplyDelete