2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

During the pandemic, the College of Engineering at Michigan State University (MSU) developed an online, asynchronous, non-credit course to provide required training in RECR (Responsible and Ethical Conduct of Research) for graduate students. Each week, students completed one online training module from the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI); topics included: Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research; Authorship; Plagiarism; and Research Misconduct. After completing the CITI module, students used MSU’s online learning system to engage in asynchronous discussions about reflection questions and/or case studies related to the weekly CITI topic.

Students’ experiences with this online course during the pandemic were unexpectedly positive: what had been intended as a stop-gap measure until in-person training resumed turned out to be an excellent method for fostering ongoing conversations between graduate students about ethical issues. While this course serves hundreds of students each year, participants are organized into smaller discussion cohorts that provide opportunities to build community within and across majors. Offering this RECR training in a virtual, asynchronous format also allowed students from fully-online graduate programs to connect with students enrolled in traditional, in-person MS and PhD programs.

This RECR course has been offered 11 times over five years (2020-2025), serving more than 1,600 students across eight engineering disciplines. This paper discusses lessons learned by developing and refining this program, including insights about the cadence, structure, and content of the training that may be valuable to other institutions seeking to adapt this approach.