Navigating Roadblocks and Obstacles

Overview

Teaching: 15 min
Exercises: 20 min

Questions

• What do I do when I get stuck on an activity / assignment?

Objectives

• Students identify a range of strategies from getting “unstuck” when tackling challenging problems and place these strategies in a hierarchy of actions that can be taken in a range of situations.

Background

Inevitably you will experience roadblock and setbacks – both in developing an understanding of machine learning and your application of it to research problems.

Research is inherently challenging because you are trying to do something that has not been done before. You may need to alter assumptions, reframe hypotheses, and develop new ideas to get yourself around roadblocks. These modified/new assumptions/hypotheses/ideas may be ones that you generate yourself, or they may be ones that you generate with your peer colleagues, research mentors, collaborators, and/or your research group. This is fundamentally a part of the process of research and sometimes these obstacles can be the very thing that lead you to an unexpected and fruitful outcome.

There are two common mistakes to avoid: First, trying to be so independent and self sufficient that you never ask for help and end up spinning your wheels endlessly. Second, immediately jumping for assistance without taking some time to try to do some independent thinking so that you can troubleshoot the problem yourself. It can be a tough balance to find the middle ground, but recognizing when is the appropriate time to ask for help is part of the learning process.

Because you will inevitably run into roadblocks and obstacles and you will have to think of creative ways to get around, over, or through them, it is important to develop a collection of strategies that might be useful to you in different situations and identify which ones would be best to try first and which to save to last.

Activity: Reflect on actions in “Introduction to Citrination” module

Consider the list of strategies below as a starting point and work with your group to add additional items and more detail (the who and how for your Skunkworks group).

• Reread/review what is already available to you
• Look for public online resources that might help (i.e. Google it)
• Think about the problem sideways (i.e. look at it from another angle)
• Take a short break and come back to it with fresh eyes
• Break a big problem into small pieces and tackle each one separately
• Interact with peer colleagues who may have dealt with something similar
• Use your broader network
• Interact with your group mentor
• Seek out other subject experts
• Identify ways you can move forward even in the face of uncertainty

After developing a more complete list, place them into three categories:

1. Things I can try to do independently:
2. If that doesn’t work, things I could try to do next:
3. If my other attempts fail, then try:

Reference: W.C. Crone, Introduction to Engineering Research, Morgan & Claypool Publishers (2020).
(Note: This book is available as a free PDF download from the university library.)

Key Points