Experiences teaching a graduate research methods course

ABSTRACT

Teaching research methods to computer science graduate students presents a number of significant challenges. Of particular concern is the extreme breadth of material that must be covered and the diversity of the students taking the course. This paper describes the implementation of the graduate research methods course at Virginia tech. The primary goal of this course is to improve the ability of research-track students to perform graduate research and more generally to prepare for their professional career (not necessarily in research). A notable feature of our implementation is the use of authentic assignments whenever possible.

REFERENCES

• 1: N. J. Higham. Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences. SIAM, 1998.
• 2: R. Jain. The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis. Wiley, 1991.
• 3: I. C. Johnston. Exercises for review of grammer and punctuation. Available at www.mala.bc.ca/~johnsto/grammar/review.htm, 2003.
• 4: Jens Palsberg , Scott J. Baxter, Teaching reviewing to graduate students, Communications of the ACM, v.45 n.12, December 2002 [doi>10.1145/585597.585612]
• 5: C. A. Shaffer. CS5014 Research Methods Course Website. Available at courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs5014, 2002.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Curriculum

General Terms:
Management

Keywords:
experimental design, professionalism, research methods, statistics, technical writing