Integrating Research Experience in Project Based Learning

A lot of emphasis is being placed on the research experience at undergraduate level both by institutions of higher learning as well as industries focusing on research&development (R&D). This requires a twofold effort. First is to develop research competency in teaching faculty so that they can act like mentors and second is to develop a process so that the students develop basic research skills through practice. Parallels can be drawn between the Engineering Design (ED) process and research skill building process in terms of creativity and problem solving. Similar to the ED process, a converging and diverging process can be used to creative problem research. This process has been introduced as part of a course project at the third year level for the course Programming Industrial Automation Systems. This paper tries to demonstrate the process through which a structured literature survey is carried out by the students leading to a variety of research problems. This process is carried out as a team activity. Research assignments have been integrated in the course, which requires students to find information on automation related topic using both print and electronic resources available at the college library and on the Internet. Aiming to foster the development of technical information literacy and communication skills, the students are required to prepare a report based on a specific set of guidelines, followed by implementation of the solution and oral presentations of the topics researched. A lecture on the subject of identifying and using information resources is included in the syllabus. Preliminary results of the study are presented along with directions for designing and implementing an enriched curriculum for Automation course.