Undergraduate Research Experience with Software Development using a Large Existing Code Base in a Teaching-oriented College

Abstract

Undergraduate research has been shown to enrich education, increase retention and promote critical thinking. Research projects involving extending an already mature and relatively large code base have special value for students, as they mimic industry experience. Students have to understand the existing code structure and figure out where to add their code to extend the functionality of the system. There are obvious challenges for undergraduate students to take on such projects, including lack of knowledge at the onset of the project, limited time span (normally a semester), and limited time availability during a semester. Undergraduate institutions have additional challenges, such as high teaching load for faculty advisors and lack of graduate students who could act as mentors. In this paper, we report our experience with a relatively large project that lasted for several semesters and involved several teams of students. We managed the challenges by being flexible and carving out many mini-projects from this umbrella project, which required that the faculty advisor work closely with students. The project has successfully produced a teaching/learning tool for auto-gradable full tracing exercises. The tool has been prototyped in classrooms and helped students learn various programming constructs. We hope that our experience could encourage larger scale projects in undergraduate institutions.