Assignment 3 (Due Nov 29) and the Final Exam (due Dec 4/7) have been released. Please review and share any questions ASAP during office hours or by email.
Please complete the online teaching evaluation for the course (through 'SmartEvals')
Final Research Papers (in-class Tuesday):
Group 1 (Reinforcement Learning): Liam, Marilyn, Reese, Nikhil, Onkar;
Group 2 (Learning to Rank): Justin, Alexis, Anna, Jeffrey;
Group 3 (Passage Search): Bahdah, Lucas, Ketaki, Andrew, Emily
Thank you all for a great semester.
Week 14
Assignment 3 (Due Nov 29) and the Final Exam (due Dec 4/7) have been released. Please review and share any questions ASAP during office hours or by email.
Please complete the online teaching evaluation for the course (through 'SmartEvals')
Final Research Papers (in-class next Tuesday): three papers have been put on MyCourses. We will discuss these in class next Tuesday (during our final class). Each paper will be discussed for 15 mins, and a grade will be assigned based on the discussion in-class by each group.
Group 1 (Reinforcement Learning): Liam, Marilyn, Reese, Nikhil, Onkar;
Group 2 (Learning to Rank): Justin, Alexis, Anna, Jeffrey;
Group 3 (Passage Search): Bahdah, Lucas, Ketaki, Andrew, Emily
Reading this week: Finishing Ch. 7.5/7.6 with related material from Ch 9.1.2 (on SVMs)
Week 13
Please complete the online teaching evaluation for this course (through 'SmartEvals).
Deadlines:
Quiz 12 (the final quiz!) will be due before class on Thursday.
Reading: We will be starting to talk about evaluating search results, which is covered in Ch. 8 of Bruce Croft's text.
Remaining Deliverables: Assignment 3, 3rd research paper discussion (in-class Nov. 24th), and Project 3 (presentation 'exam' + project)
Week 12
Deadlines:
Project 2 is due Sunday (Nov. 8th)
Quiz 11 is due Friday before 2pm (optional) - deadine extended due to late posting of the quiz.
Reading: we are working though Ch. 7 and should start Ch. 8 on evaluation this Thursday.
Tutorial - Behrooz has been asked to post a brief video summarizing BM25 and probabilistic retrieval models sometime Friday.
Week 11
**Quiz Update**: there will be two more quizzes this semeter, and your final quiz grade will be computed after dropping your two lowest quiz grades.
Deadlines:
**Extension** - Project 2 is now due Sunday Nov. 8th (1 week later).
Quiz 10 will be due Thusday before class
Schedule: Some minor changes in the schedule have been made. For the third research paper summaries, I will try to include an in-class component during the final class for the semester. Details to come.
Tutorial: if there is material that you would like to Behrooz to cover in a brief asynchronous video at the end of this week, please let him or myself know.
Reading (for Thursday): read Hearst Ch. 7 on retrieval models.
Week 10
Office Hours: Prof. Zanibbi will hold office hours Friday, but has a conflict from 10am-11am Friday. Please send email or used the discord channel for the class if you have questions.
Deadlines:
Quiz 9 will be due Thursday before class.
Assignment 2 is due Tuesday at 11:59pm.
Project 2 is due Nov. 1st at 11:59pm.
Readings this week: Croft Ch. 6
Tutorial: please let Behrooz or Prof. Zanibbi know if there is material that you would like Behrooz to cover (asynchronously, in a video) on Friday this week. The video for Behrooz's tutorial (covering Assignment 2 and Project 2) is available through MyCourses.
Week 9
Deadlines:
Quiz 8 will be due Thursday before class.
Assignment 2 is due Tuesday, Oct. 20th at 11:59pm.
Project 2 is due Nov. 1st at 11:59pm.
Readings this week: Ch. 4 and Ch. 6 in Croft
Reminder: no tutorial this Friday.
Week 8
Tutorials are cancelled until further notice, due to a lack of participation. Behrooz will continue to hold office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays (see times above).
Prof. Zanibbi's office hours are cancelled Friday Oct. 9th due to a conflict. If you have questions, please send email to Prof. Zanibbi.
Deadlines:
Quiz 7 will be available by Wednesday morning, and due Thursday before class.
Discussion Posts (Thurs): Before Thursday at 11:59pm, all students need to provide two posts in response to posts by other students that are 1) thoughtful about what has been posted already, and that 2) contribute to the discussion in a helpful way.
Project 2 and Assignment 2 will be assigned later this week.
Reading: Ch. 4 of Croft (on text processing)
Week 7
Deadlines:
Project 1 is due Tuesday night at 11:59pm.
Quiz 6 will be posted Tuesday, and is due before class on Thursday.
2nd Paper Discussion: Initial posts will be due Sunday at midnight, discussion rooms will close next Thursday (Week 8) at 11:59pm. Papers and groups have been assigned (see MyCourses).
Reading: Croft, Ch. 5
Thursday: ARQMath presentation. Behrooz, the course TA will be giving a presentation in-class on Thursday about the ARQMath task and meeting that took place at CLEF 2020 last Friday. This will be an opportunity to learn about the shared evaluation tasks (labs) used in the international IR research community used to develop and improve search algorithms.
Final Exam. The final exam has been scheduled for Friday Dec. 4th from 1:30pm-4pm (online). This will be a presentation for the final project, with the project itself due the following Monday.
Week 6
Final Exam. The final exam has been scheduled for Friday Dec. 4th from 1:30pm-4pm (online). This will be a presentation for the final project, with the project itself due the following Monday.
Zoom. The Zoom issues from earlier in the week have been sorted out (hopefully).
Quiz 5 is due before class on Thursday. It will be posted by Tuesday evening.
Project 1 is due before class next Tuesday. In addition to meeting with your team, you will need to schedule 2 Zoom meetings with other groups: one to evaluate the UI feature added by the group with the number before yours, and a second to have the group numbered 1 higher than yours evaluate your new UI feature.
Scheduling changes this week
Prof. Zanibbi's Office Hours are shifted this week (due to CLEF 2020). Office hours will be Thursday from 9am-12pm over Zoom.
There will be a tutorial this Friday covering Quiz 5, Assignment 1, and the paper discussions. The tutorial on Friday will run from 2-3pm, as Behrooz is participating in the CLEF 2020 conference this week. Link is available through Zoom.
Next Thursday, Behrooz will give us a summary of the ARQMath lab at CLEF 2020. This will be an opportunity for students to see how IR researchers cooperate to create datasets and compare different approaches for retrieval algorithms.
Week 5
Paper discussion contributions are due before class on Tuesday. Please see below and under 'Discussions' on MyCourses for details.
Quiz 4 will be released after class Tuesday, and due before class Thursday.
The tutorial will be held on Friday. Emphasis will be on Project 1, Quiz 4, and the (completed) paper discussions.
Project 1 will be released Thursday evening. This will be a team project on search UIs. Details will be announced in class and on MyCourses.
The course schedule has been updated. The shifts are mostly minor, with changes to focus assigned readings on the Croft et al. textbook. Alternative sources may be used as needed (this will be announced). Upcoming readings can be found in the updated schedule.
Week 4
Reading (for Thursday): Hearst Ch. 2.2-2.8
Quiz 3 is due Thursday before class (2pm). The quiz will be posted Tuesday evening.
As always, tutorial will be this Friday at 12pm. I have asked Behrooz to go over the answers to all questions for Quiz 3 during the tutorial, and then discuss them if there are questions.
The first set of research papers for discussion have been posted. Three papers have been posted under 'Content->Research Sources' on MyCourses. Read your assigned paper (see below), and then contribute to the online discussion for your assigned paper. The MyCourses paper discussion forums close Tuesday, Sept. 15th at 2pm (before class). A grade out of five points will be assigned, based on your contributions to the discussion (see MyCourses for details).
Foulds et al. paper: Onkar, Liam, Ketaki, Anna, and Alexis
Lin et al. paper: Reese, Nikhil, Justin, Bahdah, and Andrew
McKay et al. paper: Marilyn, Lucas, Koen, Jeffrey, and Emily
Thursday: Roman Koshykar will visit with us to talk about his experiences using IR retrieval tools, and to share library resources and tools for use in research.
Week 3
Reading (for next Tuesday): read Hearst Ch. 8 on integrating navigation with search.
Quiz 2 will be posted on Tuesday evening, and due Thursday before class.
Assignment 1 is due Sunday Sept. 6th at 11:59pm. Submit your write-up through the submission box in MyCourses.
TA/Tutorials:
Friday's tutorial recording is available under the Zoom link ("Previous Meetings") on MyCourses. Additionally, under "Content-> Tutorials," you can find the slides used in the video.
TA Office Hours start this week. Behrooz will be holding office hours Tuesdays from 12pm-1pm and Thursdays from 4-5pm until the end of the semester.
Tutorial will again be held this Friday at noon. Behrooz will go over Quiz 2 and Assignment 1.
Coming up: Next Thursday, the GCCIS librarian, Roman Koshykar will visit with us to talk about his experiences using IR retrieval tools, and to share library resources and tools for use in research.
Week 2
The first tutorial run by Behrooz will be held this Friday at 12pm over Zoom. The link is provided through MyCourses under the 'Zoom' menu.
Assignment 1 has been posted on MyCourses. It is available under 'Content -> Assignments.' A1 is due Sunday Sept. 6th at 11:59pm. Submit your completed assignment through MyCourses.
We will have our first quiz this week. The quiz will be released Tuesday, and due before class on Thursday. Quizzes will be completed online using MyCourses.
Reading (for Thursday): read Hearst Ch. 3 on information seeking models.
Week 1
This page is for the Information Retrieval course offered by the RIT Department of Computer Science during Fall 2020.
The first lecture will be given over Zoom (log in to MyCourses for the link) on Thursday, August 20th from 2pm-3:15pm.
This course will have a synchronous Blended A/B delivery, where the instructor will meet in-person with half the class on Thursdays, and the other half on Tuesdays. All lectures will be given in-class with streaming over Zoom at the scheduled time; lectures will also be recorded and made available through MyCourses.
All office hours by the instructor and TA will be given over Zoom, and not recorded. For the weekly tutorials, after the course starts, we will discuss whether to record them.
The course will provide a 'Flex' optionallowing students to take the course online for all or parts of the semester. Specific details for 'flex' delivery are currently in development; look back here for updates in the future.
Readings will be available through MyCourses; there will not be a course textbook.
The course will include assigned readings, assignments, and (team) projects. You will be expected to analyze, program/test/document, and read and write thoughtfully. You will also discuss IR research papers.
Office Hours: The instructor's office hours will be Friday mornings over Zoom (9am-12pm).
TA: There is a Teaching Assistant (TA) for the course (Behrooz Mansouri). The TA will hold a weekly tutorial session (starting Week 2), along with office hours each week (starting Week 3).