A persistent dilemma facing modern undergraduate education across institutions is balancing the  
desirability of offering research experience to students as part of the curriculum against the high  
resource cost of providing such laboratory space, materials, and technical equipment. Hands-on  
research experience is widely recognized as one of the most important activities for the preparation and  
retention of science and engineering students. Unfortunately, undergraduate research in a lab group  
requires a significant investment of faculty and graduate student resources and mentoring. The closest  
practical analog to lab group experience, lab courses, require many hours and staffing resources to  
execute. As undergraduate enrollment continues to grow, these issues will only become more acute.  
Further, lab courses often lack the key discovery-based skills that are the most central and enjoyable  
aspects of research. This disconnect was highlighted as one of five key areas for improvement in higher  
education by The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s in their 2012 report, and  
there has been a recent trend in discovery-based lab projects and computer-based gamified studies.  
Virtual research group (VRG) modules are designed to simulate the investigative aspects of the research  
process while incorporating peer-learning, project ownership, and diverse role models, without any  
laboratory and minimal computational resources. The primary target audience of these VRG modules is  
advanced high school or first-year undergraduate students to improve early retention of students when  
the fewest research opportunities are available to them. These modules have been implemented as a  
part of the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology (NJGSET) as an elective course  
studying materials analysis and run successfully each summer from 2016. The NJGSET program brings  
some of NJ’s most talented students to Rutgers University for a program of courses and in-lab research.  
With the recent restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 NJGSET program was moved  
remote, demanding that both the courses and the research be moved to remote delivery. This presents  
a unique challenge and test for the low-resource VRG modules to see if they could be effectively  
simulate the research process without in-person interaction. Through the use of student facilitators and  
breakout rooms, students were able to continue to interact in groups, and the addition of extra activities  
allowed for the scaffolding to be implemented without additional in-class time. Through post survey  
assessment this remote VRG was compared to past offerings. While students expressed that they would  
have preferred a hands-on activity, metrics for interest in future research and materials both compared  
favorably to past VRGs. Most importantly, students reported equal enjoyment of the VRG activity as  
compared to their in-lab research in both the in-person and remote formats of each.


Transition of Virtual Research Group Modules to a Remote Teaching Environment

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.