Hands-on research experiences are a valued aspect of undergraduate science and engineering education due to the impacts they can have on student persistence in science, science identity, self-efficacy, as well as the opportunities they provide for students to develop a greater understanding of the research process and build knowledge and skills. Many institutions provide students opportunities to engage in hands-on research through independent research projects (e.g. summer undergraduate research experiences) and course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). These opportunities, however, often require a substantial investment of resources related to raw materials/equipment and faculty/staff time and can be difficult to scale to reach large populations of students. While many students do gain hands-on experience through laboratory coursework, traditional laboratory modules often lack the discovery-based skills that are central to research and help make it enjoyable. To help circumvent some of these challenges related to resource availability and experience authenticity, we have developed and implemented virtual research group (VRG) modules. VRGs use data curated from the scientific literature and/or previous laboratory experiments to simulate the investigative, discovery, and peer learning aspects of the research process outside of a traditional research laboratory setting. These modules, require students to select their own research path and participate in an iterative decision-making and data analysis process to achieve a specified objective (e.g. identify the unknown material). Students are confronted with imperfect data, failed experiments, and a research problem that they do not already know the answer to going into the experience.

In this talk we will discuss the implementation a polymer science-based VRG in two distinct environments: (i) an undergraduate, introductory materials science and engineering course and (ii) a 12-hour summer course for scientifically-motivated, rising high school seniors. We will describe the structure of the simulated research experience, focusing primarily on the implementation in the materials science course, where the VRG was assigned as a final project and integrated an educational software/materials property database, CES EduPack. We will present our preliminary analysis of student pre- and post-survey responses, focusing on how the polymer science-based VRG module has influenced student perceptions of research and materials science. We will also address how the self-reported gains of VRG participants related to “thinking and working like a scientist”, “becoming a scientist”, clarification of career/education plans, and personal-professional development compare to more traditional undergraduate research experiences and compare between the two different implementation environments (materials science course and high-school outreach course). Finally, we will address future plans for implementation and assessment and additional VRG modules related to metals and ceramics that are currently under development.


Virtual Research Group Modules: Simulating the Research Process in a Materials Science Course

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

IMECE2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.