Research Methods in Computer Science

This repository contains the material I have used for a 2 hour bootcamp on research methods in CS. I have conducted this session twice (August 2018 at IIT Gandhinagar and July 2017 at IIIT Delhi). Here is the video recording for the IIT Gandhinagar instantiation. You can also find a VideoKen version of the video here, which includes phrase cloud, table of contents and more.

Contents

I took four exercise and example driven sessions on:

1. Writing better emails: I took an example driven approach of writing good emails. I showed some poor and some good emails that I have written. We discussed a few fundamental characteristics of a good email. We did three hands-on exercise for writing e-mail to: i) potential advisor, ii) reporting results to advisor, iii) seeking help on a research project from someone outside the institute.

2. Towards better paper abstracts: I discussed the general structuring of research papers. We took case study on the constitution of a good paper abstract. We looked at potential scientific flaws that can be seen from the abstract itself. We did a few hands-on exercises.

3. Thinking like a scientist: This session was a continuation of the previous one. We discussed the scientific method with the help of a trivial example. We did a few hands-on exercises where the students were asked to present hypothesis, observation, and experimental design for few problems.

4. Debugging like a pro: This was also an example driven session. We looked at StackOverflow questions and understood the characteristics of good questions. These good questions have a much higher chance of being debugged correctly in quick time.

Feedback

The average feedback was approximately 9/10. Some of the subjective comments are as follows:

"The presentations were excellent. The hard work on making these slides was clearly visible. Also, the way the sessions were presented in the class was good."

"Dr. Nipun Batra had given a good talk. I would like to thank him for giving his valuable time and for sharing lots of experiences which will help us a lot."

"Relating with Real-World examples was the best part of the presentation."