Research Project Marketplace

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Research Project Marketplace

I quite often experience two situations. The first is of students who want to find out more about the research that is done in the school, but who cannot identify a way in. The second is that I quite often have small development projects related to research or teaching that I would love to get done but just don't have the time to do myself. One way to deal with both situations would be to make that list of small projects available to the students who could then work on them of their own accord. This might lead to the student identifying an honours project choice earlier than usual, or might provide them with the opportunity to make more progress with their honours project by achieving an actual piece of research. Thus whilst ostensibly being extra-curricular activities, from a pedagogic perspective, there might be the opportunity for the student to gain some form of academic credit from their participation. The benefits of such an approach are that researchers within the school can get small jobs done for them and could identify potential students to fill summer-job roles. Meanwhile the students have an opportunity to see what research is about whilst creating some software that they can put in their portfolio as a demonstration of their skills when they are looking for jobs at graduation. There is also a case to be made that such a scheme would prove to be an enabling factor for improving the inclusiveness and social cohesion within the school, giving students who might otherwise be on the periphery an opportunity to get involved. I would propose that a simple internal web site be used, possibly with a blog architecture, that academics can post project ideas to. Students could then respond to those ideas within the comments and get more information. I envisage a lightweight management model in which the student works mostly independently to solve the problem, unless the academic wishes otherwise, and multiple students could work either collaboratively or independently upon the projects. Some form of source control a la Sourceforge would be useful and release of all code and documentation under the GPL with ownership shared between student and researcher. This means that the student can continue to work on the software after they leave, if they wish, and the researcher can do likewise, forking the project if necessary. By also releasing the code publicly under the GPL then the school also gets to contribute new software to the public good so that the results of, possibly publicly funded, research doesn't get locked away from potential beneficiaries. This is especially important when you consider the amount of research conducted here that is aimed at supporting the elderly, sick, or disabled in their use of computers.

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Research Project Marketplace