Project Overview
The fast growing Internet and World-Wide Web have provided us with a large repository of information. However, due to the vast amount of information available, it can be a tedious and difficult task to find desired information. Effective and efficient information retrieval (IR) is becoming a key factor for success in almost any career, and IR deserves more attention as an integral element of many disciplines.
Information retrieval, which deals with the representation, storage, organization of, and access to information items, has attracted widespread industrial and academic interest for decades. Numerous theories, technologies, and products have been developed. However, IR is typically overlooked in the undergraduate curricula. In the U.S., relatively few undergraduate programs offer IR courses compared with graduate programs. Even in those institutions that offer undergraduate IR courses, because those courses are usually set up as IT/CS major courses with emphasis on programming and have strict prerequisites, it is not feasible for non-major students to enroll. The content coverage and student population of those undergraduate IR courses are generally limited. As a result, the majority of undergraduates lack adequate IR concepts and skills. The problems are even more serious for small-sized and medium-sized universities where resources tend to be limited.
To address the above problems in the current college-level IR education, This curriculum development project, supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-0534403, is carrying out three kinds of activities:
(1) Creation of a module-based curricular model, which facilitates the development of an array of IR modules that enable flexible adoption and integration. These modules, including general IR modules mainly designed for IT/CS programs, and discipline-oriented IR modules based on specific disciplines such as Biology and Psychology, can be adopted based on the specific needs of different universities and programs. The contents of these modules are mainly adapted from the following resources:
- Modern Information Retrieval, a textbook written by Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, ISBN: 0-201-39829-X, Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1999.
- CS 371R: Information Retrieval and Web Search, a course offered by Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin.
- SIMS 202: Information Organization and Retrieval, a course offered by School of Information Management & Systems, University of California at Berkeley.
- CS 276: Text Retrieval and Web Mining, a course offered by Department of Computer Science, University of Stanford.
(2) Creation of a Multi-Disciplinary Information Retrieval Laboratory across departments at Armstrong Atlantic State University, which provides not only a desirable environment for faculty and student training, but also a platform to systematically integrate IR into multidisciplinary curricula.
(3) Dissemination achievements of the project to facilitate the adoption by other universities of the module-based approach through different channels including conferences, workshops and forums.
This project provides students and faculty with an appreciation of the connection between theoretical and practical aspects of IR, from different angles of different disciplines. It also emphasizes the ubiquitous nature of IR in multiple disciplines and promotes the status of IR in undergraduate education.
