Pedagogical Enhancements for Information Retrieval Courses

Abstract

Information retrieval graduate courses have been offered in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech since 1973. Since the early 1990s, the Information Storage and Retrieval course has been improved through a variety of pedagogical enhancements, many of which are reported in this chapter. The teaching and learning philosophy is based on team- and project-based learning, concept mapping, use of open source software, and more recently, use of virtual platforms, such as Second Life. In this chapter, we report on these approaches and the tools employed. Also, we describe three course offerings as case studies, which made use of the aforementioned methods. We hope that our experiences may be of interest to others involved in IR education.