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An Experience Report for Running an REU Program in an iSchool

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Sustainable Digital Communities (iConference 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12051))

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Abstract

In this article, we report on our experiences and lessons learned from training undergraduate students in data science research in an iSchool, comparing this program to the experience of running a similar program in a computer science department. The undergraduate research training programs described were supported by the National Science Foundation (United States) through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Through investigating the research tasks, reading materials, lectures, tutorials, research reports, publications, and project evaluation results, we summarize the differences in research focus of the same program running in an iSchool and in a Computer Science department. We develop a group of research activities that can be adopted for effectively training undergraduate researchers in an iSchool. Furthermore, we propose an enhancement of the undergraduate data science curriculum based on the experiences and lessons we learned from running the REU programs.

Supported by NSF award #1852249.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The first author has been involved in multiple REU site programs, described below.

  2. 2.

    https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.jsp?unitid=5049.

  3. 3.

    More information at the project website: https://reu.ci.unt.edu.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 76203, USA

    Junhua Ding, Jiangping Chen, Alexis Palmer & Daniella Smith

Authors
  1. Junhua Ding
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  2. Jiangping Chen
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  3. Alexis Palmer
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  4. Daniella Smith
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junhua Ding .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Anneli Sundqvist

  2. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Gerd Berget

  3. University of Boras, Boras, Sweden

    Jan Nolin

  4. OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad

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Ding, J., Chen, J., Palmer, A., Smith, D. (2020). An Experience Report for Running an REU Program in an iSchool. In: Sundqvist, A., Berget, G., Nolin, J., Skjerdingstad, K. (eds) Sustainable Digital Communities. iConference 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12051. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_41

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43686-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43687-2

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