An experience report for running an REU program in an iSchool

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.