Update (3 Feb 2010): Our 2010 internship program has been posted.
I’m happy to announce that Grockit is offering a paid summer internship for a doctoral student pursuing research in an area related to our own. We’ve just posted details about this program (and the application form) on the 2009 Summer Research Internship page on our blog. I wanted to share a few thoughts on why we’re offering this, what we have in mind for the program, and why you (or perhaps someone you know) should consider applying.
Grockit, as you may know, is a San Francisco-based web startup building a platform for — and a community around — live collaborative learning games. We strive to provide our growing global network of learners with a smart platform informed by educational research, peer assistance, and data analysis. Towards this end, we’re constantly exploring ways to better support collaborative learning online, and we’re frequently examining and applying techniques for analyzing the learning data that we’ve been collecting. One reason that we’re offering this program is to expand on the ways in which we pursue these goals.
Two of the challenges in studying computational systems for peer learning — both of which I faced in completing my own graduate research — is that these systems can take quite some time to build, and it can often take even longer to cultivate a sufficiently large community of participating learners. As a result, the time required to get from hypothesis to data analysis can be (or at least can feel) quite long. At Grockit, we’ve been making good progress with regards to both challenges, and hope that this internship will provide an enterprising graduate student with the opportunity to speed up this process for their own research questions.
For hypotheses that can be tested within our existing system, experiments can be set up easily, and analysis can begin quickly. For hypotheses that require additional application features or data collection facilities, the intern would have the opportunity to pair with Grockit developers (as part of our agile development process) to code and test the necessary changes. Ideally, the ten-week duration of the internship will offer enough time to do a bit of both types of studies. At the end of the summer, the completed work will be presented to the team. Depending on the nature of the projects, jointly-authored publications may follow.
In addition to the research opportunity, we’re offering a stipend for the program. Several other perks are included: accommodations are provided in one of our nice lofts in the Mission, breakfast and lunch is provided on weekdays, and San Francisco is a fun spot to spend a summer. So if you are a doctoral student attending or publishing at conferences like AIED, CSCL, or EDM and interested in a summer research position with us, I encourage you to apply today.
