CS 2501

I took Professor Morrison's first ever Preparing for Research class. I wanted to get involved in CS research, which seemed really intimidating to do by just cold emailing professors, so this class seemed like a good idea. I'm hoping that it will be worth it, because it was definitely more work than I was anticipating. We had to conduct our own research project and write a research paper, but all over the course of about a month and with very little instruction from Professor Morrison. I obviously want to give her some grace because this was the very first time this class has ever been taught at UVA. She told us we were her guinea pigs, and was very open to totally honest feedback at the end of the semester. So take what I say with a grain of salt, because she's probably (hopefully) making some changes to this class for the next time.
Basically, we started by learning about two different research projects. One was a very code-based project, and the other was about a machine learning algorithm. You got to pick which project you wanted to work with about three weeks in, and you did that project for the rest of the semester. You picked a group of three other students who had chosen the same project, and you worked together on the final project. The homeworks (watching guided videos, doing "tests" on Canvas about the video and requiring you to do some research or focus on a specific section of your chosen paper) are individual, but the grading for the final is based solely on your group work.
Throughout the semester, different CS professors would come in and pitch their labs to us for 5-10 minutes. At the end of the semester, Professor Morrison sent out a form with all the labs that had open positions for the next school year. Some are paid, some are for credit, and some are just volunteer hours. You could choose what kind of position you wanted, you ranked the labs, and then Morrison did some matching algorithm and you got assigned to a lab.
The work itself was kind of annoying and felt like busy work. My group didn't really know what we were doing, so we spent a lot of time on the final project - but that might've just been us. The assignments didn't seem super helpful in the moment, but she definitely gave some good resources that I didn't know about before the class and I'll definitely be coming back to as I start research. In my opinion, it's a super easy A+ and the work is worth it to be put into a research lab without having to stress about finding one by yourself.