Paid summer internship on a funded ACM research project. Location: UCD School of Computer Science, Dublin Ireland.

I am looking for a summer intern to work on a research project funded by a grant from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). This work will begin in the late Spring or early Summer of 2017 and be complete by September 2017.

This research will collect, categorize and analyze the learning outcome statements of CS1 courses across a large, diverse set of institutions. This will provide an answer to the question: What exactly are we expecting our novice programming students to achieve? This will allow the CS education community to decide if, as recent evidence has suggested, we have unrealistic expectations of our CS1 students. If this is indeed the case, the outputs of this research will also provide a starting point for the community to adjust its expectations of novice programmers. This could result in improvements in failure rates, retention, diversity and equity in CS education.

The project will require 8-12 weeks of full-time paid work (depending on hourly commitment). The outputs of this research will aim to be published in a leading ACM journal or conference. The student intern will directly contribute to this effort and will be a co-author on the publication.

The successful student will be well versed in structured web searches and related technologies and be able to develop a website and database to store project outputs. A good work ethic, attention to detail, and written communication skills are required. References from module lecturers or similar will form part of your application.

This is an excellent opportunity for any goal-oriented undergraduate student looking to gain real-world experience on a funded research project and who would like to start or enhance their publication history.

Please contact Dr. Brett Becker for further information including application procedure.