INST 734
Information Retrieval Systems
Fall 2014
Module 1: Tuesday September 2 to Sunday September 7
This module provides an introduction to the course, first focusing on
the content, then on the way the course is organized. Most modules
are designed to be completed in 12 hours over 7 days, but this first
module is designed to be completed in 10 hours over 6 days. As with
every module, you must complete all components of this module by
midnight on the evening of the indicated end date (in this case,
Sunday, September 7). In general, you should complete the readings in
the first part of each week, view the other videos and read the
additional reading summaries that your classmates will prepare after
that, and then plan to spend some time over the weekend on working on
an assigned exercise or term project. One key to success in an online
course is to establish a rhythm that allows you to spread the time
you spend learning throughout the week rather than trying to cram
everything in one long day. This is important because your mind can
continue to structure your understanding of new ideas for some time
after you have first been exposed to them, and it can therefore be
helpful to arrange your schedule to encounter different ideas at
different times.
Module Checklist
The recommended order for completing the activities in this module is:
- Read the Technology Skills
and Tools page.
- View the introductory video for this
module.
- Read the Ingwersen and
Järvelin chapter.
- Read the Reading
Summary that I created for the Ingwersen and Järvelin
chapter. In future modules, you will create reading summaries like
this one (note the guidance for how to do that on page 2 of this
file).
- View the first reading commentary video.
- Read Chapter 1 of our "MRS"
(Manning, Raghavan and Schütze) textbook.
- View the second reading commentary video.
- View the Nature of Information Retrieval
lecture video.
- View the What IR Systems Do lecture video.
- View the Structure of Interactive IR
Systems lecture video.
- View the Guest Cameo video by Hussein Suleman.
- Read the Course
Description Web page.
- Skim the Course Schedule Web page.
- View the Course Logistics video.
- Read Exercise 1.
- Watch the exercise explanation video for
Exercise E1.
- Complete Exercise E1 and submit your results using ELMS.
- Send me an email at oard@umd.edu to let me know you have
completed the module (this is only required for the first
module, mostly so that I will know I have a good email address for
you).
- If you want to hear some of the topics in this module
presented differently, consider viewing parts of the optional supplementary videos.
Readings
I suggest that you usually complete the reading assignments by
Wednesday of each week, doing one reading each day. Most weeks we
will have three reading assignments, but this week we have two reading assignments.
Immediately after you do each reading, watch the associated commentary video, which will give you my reaction to the
video. Many of our readings include considerable detail, and some of
those details are more important than others. For this reason, you
may want to skip over some of the more difficult details initially,
instead reading to get the key ideas to know what kind of information
the reading contains. After watching the commentary video, you can go
back to re-read specific sections that you might have skipped over
once you know which of the details are most important to master. If
at that point you sill have questions, or if you have comments on a
reading that you would like to discuss with me and with your
classmates, you can post your questions and comments to the post them
to the discussion forum on ELMS. Doing this by Wednesday night will
ensure that there is plenty of time for discussion before the end of
the module.
Summaries of Additional Readings
Each week, five students will be assigned to write a one-page summary
of a reading that their classmates will not have read. This process
has two goals. First, it will help me to assess what you are learning
from the readings. For this reason, it is a graded assignment.
Second, the summaries will provide your classmates with a broader view
of a topic than they would have time to learn about on their own.
Summaries of additional readings are therefore due at midnight on
Thursday so that your classmates will be able to read them on Friday.
Videos
Each week, there are at least five kinds of videos:
- The first one to
watch is the module introduction, which I will have recorded from
someplace different in the world each time. My goal here is twofold:
(1) to briefly name what we will be talking about, and (2) to
illustrate that information retrieval is a global endeavor.
- The next videos you should watch are the reading commentary
videos, as described above.
- After that, you should view the lecture videos. This is where
I walk through the key ideas in each module in an integrated
fashion, drawing on ideas from the readings but also adding
perspectives that we didn't read about. These short lectures are
often distilled from ideas actually discussed in class in prior
semesters. As with the readings, the discussion forum on ELMS is a
great place to discuss things with me and with your classmates that
arise as you watch these lecture videos.
- For each module there are links to a "classroom video" of a
full-length (3-hour class) sessions of the same course from prior
semesters that you can optionally consult if you would like to see
similar material discussed in a different format. The videos from
prior semesters were, however, not originally created for this
purpose, and the recording quality is somewhat variable. I don't
recommend that you routinely watch these full-session classroom
videos, but they are there for you to consult when you think doing
so might be useful. Note that some of these are recorded in unusual
formats that require that you have the free RealPlayer software
installed.
- Finally, there will be a guest cameo video in most weeks that
will introduce you to a famous information retrieval researcher from
somewhere in the world. What they choose to talk about will
sometimes match the topic of the module to some degree, but my main
purpose in including these guest cameo videos is to illustrate how
the ideas from different modules in this course are woven together
by people who actually work professionally on information
retrieval.
Most weeks, there will also be a video introducing an exercise (or a
project "deliverable," a component of your term project that is due by
end of a specific module). This week, there's also a video on course
logistics -- the usual sorts of thing that we would discuss during the
first "meeting" of any course. None of the videos are very long, and
in aggregate in a typical week they would take perhaps an hour and a
half to view if you were to watch them all back-to-back. But that's
not the best way to view them -- with they exception of the lecture
videos, these are designed to be watched on different days. Here are
the videos for this module:
Exercise E1
Finally, complete Exercise E1. Like all
assignments that you are asked to turn in, this is due at midnight on
the last day of the module (which is always a Sunday night). As with
the videos, questions about the assignments can be posted to ELMS, but
questions should be posted by Saturday night to make sure that I have
time to answer them before the assignment is due. Note that you are
allowed to work with other students on exercises, but you must type in
the results yourself (no cut and paste -- see the course description
for details).
Don't forget to send me an email when you complete the module. This
may seem like a lot to do in the first week of the course, but it is
fairly typical of what a weekly module will be like. I think you'll
find that if you work at a steady pace, spreading your effort
throughout the week, this can be a truly exceptional learning
experience. Nothing is more conducive to learning than engagement
with the material, and our goal is to provide you with an unmatched
opportunity for that kind of engagement.
Doug Oard
Last modified: Fri Sep 26 13:58:27 2014