Documenting the Unwritten Curriculum of Student Research

Shomir Wilson


Abstract
Graduate and undergraduate student researchers in natural language processing (NLP) often need mentoring to learn the norms of research. While methodological and technical knowledge are essential, there is also a “hidden curriculum” of experiential knowledge about topics like work strategies, common obstacles, collaboration, conferences, and scholarly writing. As a professor, I have written a set of guides that cover typically unwritten customs and procedures for academic research. I share them with advisees to help them understand research norms and to help us focus on their specific questions and interests. This paper describes these guides, which are freely accessible on the web (https://shomir.net/advice), and I provide recommendations to faculty who are interested in creating similar materials for their advisees.
Anthology ID:
2024.teachingnlp-1.1
Volume:
Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Teaching NLP
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand
Editors:
Sana Al-azzawi, Laura Biester, György Kovács, Ana Marasović, Leena Mathur, Margot Mieskes, Leonie Weissweiler
Venues:
TeachingNLP | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1–3
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.teachingnlp-1.1
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Shomir Wilson. 2024. Documenting the Unwritten Curriculum of Student Research. In Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Teaching NLP, pages 1–3, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Documenting the Unwritten Curriculum of Student Research (Wilson, TeachingNLP-WS 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.teachingnlp-1.1.pdf