An Introductory Course on Research in Engineering Education- An experiment in training faculty in India

Abstract

This Innovative Practice Full Paper reflects on a pilot experiment aimed to fill a perceived need for training faculty and to sustain systematic and rigorous research in the area of engineering education in India. The pilot was carried out in the form of a year-long online course with thirteen webinars, taught by two faculty members, one from the United States and one from Australia. One of the faculty is a computer engineer who has published research in engineering education outlets in the past decade, and the other faculty member is a psychologist who has extensive experience in conducting human subjects research. The participants in the course are faculty teaching in engineering institutions in India. Some have a PhD while others have a master’s degree in an engineering discipline. The course was designed to cater to an audience that had no prior experience with human subject research and no prior experience in action research. The content covered are the significant components of a research framework, which includes problem definition, research design, methods of data collection and analyses, ethical issues in research and report writing. The long-term goal for this course is to spread awareness of best practices and to increase the overall quality of papers in this area. A survey was administered to the 40 participants in the course, and information was obtained that is deemed helpful to future offerings of the course. This paper summarizes the findings and aims to present them to an international audience with the intent of soliciting inputs from the audience and engage in a discussion that might inform future efforts in this direction in other countries where engineering education might be a nascent discipline.