A Conscious Research Implementation: Research Integration in the Classroom.

The American Society for Engineering Education's Engineering Technology Council advocates. The degree is engineering technology, the career is engineering™. However, motivating and supporting Engineering Technology students to persist in pursuing a career in engineering continues to be a significant educational challenge. The researchers have identified an area that appears to be lacking but has the potential to support students as they navigate this and other challenges. This paper is the first of many that will explore the integration of research in an applied program. While future work will include the construction and implementation of a novel framework on Conscious Research (CR), this work verifies the level that research is implemented in the classroom so that additional work to implement the CR framework can be further defined. The researchers suggest that faculty can provide substantially more effective and engaging instruction in freshman through senior courses when students are continuously involved in the use of research throughout the educational experience. For example, the CR cycle can be used to formulate a question, conduct a literature survey, re-formulate the question, propose a solution, an improvement, or an updated approach, design/build/implement the proposed approach, and present to others. In this cycle, the search for discovery and innovation materializes. This preliminary work investigates the use of research materials, introduction of practices, and those performing this kind of work in the classroom, at every level. This study is done at a large research institution where research is pervasive throughout and there are many engineering technology students. Researchers chose the Student Perception of Research Integration Questionnaire (SPRIQ) to assess student perception of research in their learning environment. The first step in assessing the implementation of CR in a program. The results from this assessment will provide an understanding of how research is utilized in engineering technology programs with the basic assumption that the utilization of research attracts, motivates, and engages students and faculty alike in a sustainable culture of excellence vertically within each program, horizontally across engineering technology, and upwardly to the graduate program. The result of engaging in critical research is a better-prepared graduate to enter the engineering profession or advance to graduate school and tackle the demands of the 21st-century engineering industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]