skip to main content
10.1145/1999747.1999828acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesiticseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Undergraduate research: a case study

Published: 27 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes a one semester research course for undergraduates of computing programs. Students formulate a research proposal, conduct research and write a full paper. They present the results at a one-day student conference. On the one hand we offer the students a lot of structure and support; on the other hand an important feature of the course is that they are in control of their own research. A key aspect of the pedagogical approach is that the students are supervised in small teams by experienced staff. The results of evaluations show that the students are positive about the course. One of the main findings is that they feel well prepared to conduct research in the graduate program.

References

[1]
Lawrence D'Antonio, Roger Boyle, Amruth Kumar, Logan Muller, Claudia Roda, and Matti Tedre. 2009. Undergraduate research in CS: a global perspective. SIGCSE Bull. 41, 3 (July 2009), 139--140. DOI=10.1145/1595496.1562923 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1595496.1562923
[2]
Reynold Bailey, Guy-Alain Amoussou, Tiffany Barnes, Hans-Peter Bischof, and Thomas Naps. 2010. Relevant real-world undergraduate research problems: lessons from the nsf-reu trenches. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 62--63. DOI=10.1145/1734263.1734283 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1734263.1734283
[3]
L. Barker. 2009. Student and Faculty Perceptions of Undergraduate Research Experiences in Computing. Trans. Comput. Educ. 9, 1, Article 5 (March 2009), 28 pages. DOI=10.1145/1513593.1513598 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1513593.1513598
[4]
Katrin Becker. 2005. Cutting-edge research by undergraduates on a shoestring?. J. Comput. Small Coll. 21, 1 (October 2005), 160--168.
[5]
Bhagyavati, Brenda Latka, Guy-Alain Amoussou, and Shivakant Mishra. 2006. Attributes of successful undergraduate research projects. J. Comput. Small Coll. 21, 5 (May 2006), 107--109.
[6]
Mary J. Granger, Guy-Alain Amoussou, Miguel A. Labrador, Sue Perry, and Kelly M. Van Busum. 2006. Research experience for undergraduates: successes and challenges. SIGCSE Bull. 38, 1 (March 2006), 558--559. DOI=10.1145/1124706.1121513 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1124706.1121513
[7]
Tony Greening and Judy Kay. 2002. Undergraduate research experience in computer science education. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 3 (June 2002), 151--155. DOI=10.1145/637610.544459 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/637610.544459
[8]
Hilary J. Holz, Anne Applin, Bruria Haberman, Donald Joyce, Helen Purchase, and Catherine Reed. 2006. Research methods in computing: what are they, and how should we teach them?. SIGCSE Bull. 38, 4 (June 2006), 96--114. DOI=10.1145/1189136.1189180 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1189136.1189180
[9]
F. E. Sandnes, H-L. Jian, and Y-P. Huang. 2006. Involving Undergraduate Students in Research: Is it Possible?. In 9th International Conference on Engineering Education, 23--28 July, 2006, 1--6.
[10]
Karen Ward. 2004. The fifty-four day thesis proposal: first experiences with a research course. J. Comput. Small Coll. 20, 2 (December 2004), 94--109.

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Undergraduate Research Experience with Software Development using a Large Existing Code Base in a Teaching-oriented CollegeProceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3450329.3476864(129-134)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2021
  • (2021)Undergraduate Research Experiences: A case study from the Computer Science Department, University of Guyana2021 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI)10.1109/CSCI54926.2021.00028(1050-1054)Online publication date: Dec-2021
  • (2020)An Interdisciplinary Collaboration Enhances Education in Both Disciplines and Generates Future OpportunitiesProceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3368308.3415385(149-155)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2020
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '11: Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2011
418 pages
ISBN:9781450306973
DOI:10.1145/1999747
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tag

  1. undergraduate research

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

ITiCSE '11
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

Upcoming Conference

ITiCSE '25
Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
June 27 - July 2, 2025
Nijmegen , Netherlands

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)27
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 10 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Undergraduate Research Experience with Software Development using a Large Existing Code Base in a Teaching-oriented CollegeProceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3450329.3476864(129-134)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2021
  • (2021)Undergraduate Research Experiences: A case study from the Computer Science Department, University of Guyana2021 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI)10.1109/CSCI54926.2021.00028(1050-1054)Online publication date: Dec-2021
  • (2020)An Interdisciplinary Collaboration Enhances Education in Both Disciplines and Generates Future OpportunitiesProceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3368308.3415385(149-155)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2020
  • (2019)Research gradualness matrix for undergraduate students in computing related careers2019 IEEE World Conference on Engineering Education (EDUNINE)10.1109/EDUNINE.2019.8875850(1-6)Online publication date: Mar-2019
  • (2016)Aiming highProceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the European Association for Computer Graphics: Education Papers10.5555/3059068.3059071(17-24)Online publication date: 9-May-2016
  • (2016)Algorithms + Organization = SystemsProceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/2899415.2899458(65-70)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2016
  • (2015)Teaching Computing as Science in a Research ExperienceProceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/2676723.2677231(24-29)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2015
  • (2013)Applying Knowledge, Skills and Abilities in undergraduate research seminar course2013 12th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET)10.1109/ITHET.2013.6671016(1-3)Online publication date: Oct-2013
  • (2012)Transforming programming-intensive courses with course-embedded researchProceedings of the 13th annual conference on Information technology education10.1145/2380552.2380612(203-208)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2012

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media