Prepare students for writing code in a way that facilitates team collaboration, by Dimitrios Charalampidis, University of New Orleans

Idea: Educate students about common practices for developing code associated to existing or their own research, in order to prepare them for an efficient/effective group collaboration in terms of sharing resources. Emphasize to the REU students that such practices will benefit them during the REU experience, as well as when working in research groups while pursuing a graduate degree.
Objective: Teach students good coding practices.
What works well:

For students when developing code:

Using meaningful variable names in the code that can be directly associated to variables or parameters in the relevant research paper(s) or other resources, including their own documents (technical reports, proceedings papers, etc).
Citing the source, if any, associated to the code.
Adding detailed comments that describe an algorithm.
Modularizing the code using subroutines and provide a separate file with a short description of what these subroutines do.
Preparing an additional document with code description, one which is as precise and concise as possible, since it might not be possible for REU students to read long manuals during the summer REU experience.

For advisors/mentors:

Emphasizing that a good coding practice will help group collaboration during the REU experience, but also in their future endeavors (graduate school, participation in research projects).
Asking REU students to exchange and share their code with other REU students as soon as possible in order to experience quickly the importance of good coding practices.

What doesn’t work well: Allowing students to write their code without any form of supervision.
Assessment data: N/A

Contributed by Dimitrios Charalampidis, University of New Orleans