INTRODUCING UNDERGRADUATES TO RESEARCH - A CASE-STUDY FROM THE FIELD OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

This paper reports on an experimental program aimed at introducing und ergraduates to research in computer science. For two summers groups of college sophomores and juniors participated in an intensive research program on human-computer interaction. Working in small groups under t he direction of a project director, they devised and carried out exper imental studies in areas such as cognition of programming, interface d esign, and the training of end users of computers. Later a research co mponent was designed for a regularly scheduled course on human-compute r interaction, based on what was learned from the summer research prog ram and modified to fit the format of a normal course. In this paper w e describe the undergraduate summer research and its adaptation to a r egular course format. We also discuss the lessons learned from this wo rk.