A case for bringing undergraduate research into the classroom

Abstract

Higher education curriculum for STEM fields and particularly engineering involves a lot of technical content. Educators mostly use traditional teaching/learning methods to deliver this content. Many, however, recently introduced more active and student-centered methods such as practical project-based learning, active learning tools, and flipped classrooms to achieve better learning of STEM content. However, research have not been adequately incorporated as a teaching tool in such curriculum, despite the numerous studies indicating its benefits in teaching and learning. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of incorporating research activities in the classroom to augment the teaching/learning process for the benefit of the students. The initial empirical results show increased interest from the students in the subject and higher involvement in classroom activities. An example in computer architecture is used to show this impact.