Courseware, Education and Curriculum in Information Retrieval

Welcome to WWW pages for a special workshop to be held Thursday, August 22, 1996, 8:30am-3:00pm as part of ACM SIGIR'96, The 19th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, held at ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Aug. 18-22, 1996

Workshop Description

Abstract

This workshop - for educators, trainers, and employers of those who wish to work in the information retrieval field - will continue the process of developing curricula, courses, training materials, courseware, etc. suitable for worldwide use. It will target undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. levels and span the range from focused training needs to introductory courses to concentrations or full programs. We urge attendance of all interested teachers, researchers, artists, and those hiring in information-related industries.

Planned Activities

1. The meeting will begin with up to 2 hours of presentations.
   • Fox will serve as chair and open the session with a short report on the Workshop/Symposium on Information Retrieval 2000: Workplace Needs and Curricular Implications, sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and hosted by Drexel University on May 24, 1996. This presentation will include a summary of curriculum collected over WWW.
   • There will be a review of activities by the SIGIR Education Committee.
   • Alan Smeaton will report on CEC efforts, including a multi-institution collaborative project creating a syllabus for an M.sc. in Information Engineering of which a substantial part is IR and IR-related topics.
   • Tefko Saracevic and Nick Belkin will discuss the Rutgers curriculum and plans.
   • Gary Marchionini will discuss the U. Maryland curriculum and plans.
2. There will be special attention to:
   • Aids to teaching about evaluation
   • Hypertext and hypermedia requirements
   • Needs in Europe and Asia
   • Requirements of potential employers of those trained in the IR field
3. The rest of the morning will deal with the problem of defining an IR curriculum: what courses can be agreed upon at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels (and at similar levels in non-US-type educational systems), and what "knowledge modules" can be defined and put together in several ways to suit a variety of course sequences. At the end of the morning session the workshop will break into groups so that each course and knowledge module can be covered by those best suited. Initial discussions can begin over lunch.
4. After lunch, each workshop group will meet separately. During a 2 hour period a draft syllabus for each course or knowledge module will be developed. After another break, the groups will all meet together, presenting their conclusions. Discussion will lead to refinements of group reports.
5. A preliminary report will be taken to Majorca by Edie Rasmussen and Alan Smeaton.
6. The revised workshop report will appear in Forum to stimulate discussion in the IR community of the proposed curriculum effort.

Goals and Plans

Tefko Saracevic's Deliverables

Sections of Draft Paper

• Definition of IR
• Knowledge Module List
• Models
• Systems
• Users and Evaluation
• Digital Libraries Core

For additional information:

See new URLs for IR courses provided in response to pre-workshop survey. These are also reflected in the IR Course Info page. Additional insight is provided from the online transcript of the afternoon session of the Drexel workshop and a short summary list prepared from it.

Send mail to fox@vt.edu to reach Ed Fox.

See also more general information on Multimedia, Hypertext and Information Access Curriculum & Courseware