Lectures this week. Tuesday we will go over the project proposals and preparation for the final project deliverables and presentations. Thursday we will have a brief review and address any final questions about the project.
End-of-Term Office Hours. This week and next week during Reading/Exams Week, I will be holding my regular office hours in my office (GOL 3551) and over Zoom Tuesday 3:30-5pm, and Thursday 10:30am-12pm. If you would like to meet at a different time, please send email to set up a meeting. I am also happy to answer any questions over email and the class discord.
**2nd Extension** Final Research Paper (#3) now due Thursday (April 24).
Final Project Presentations (Exam). The final project deliverables including presentation slides, your final report, and rough work are due 12pm on FridayMay 2nd from 1:30-4pm.
Course Evaluation (SmartEvals): Please take a moment to fill this out (at the latest, before Reading Day). This course has been improved over the years due to feedback from students. It is particularly helpful to know what worked for you in the course, and what changes would have been helpful.
Week 14
Lectures this week
**Tuesday lecture and office hours are cancelled** Prof. Zanibbi and the dprl@RIT lab are attending an NSF AI center meeting early this week.
Thursday lecture: We will cover material related to the final assignment, and discuss the final research paper (#3) on RAG with LLMs (see below).
There are no more quizzes this semester!
**Extension** Assignment 4 is due Friday this week (April 18). Note that the late deadline will still be Tuesday of Wk 15 (Apr 22). Make sure to consult the provided resources (e.g., the Alamaar tutorials and BERT paper) -- these will be helpful both for the assignment and final project.
**Extension** Final Research Paper (#3) due next Monday (April 21): The third research paper is available on MyCourses, and will be discussed in-class this Thursday. The topic of the paper is Retrieval Augmented Generation for question answering with Large Language Models (LLMs).
As a reminder, after completing A4 and the final research paper, only the project remains. Optionally, you will be able to revise your 2nd/3rd paper summaries and project proposal after grades are received.
Course Evaluation (SmartEvals): Please take a moment to fill this out (at the latest, before Reading Day). This course has been improved over the years due to feedback from students. It is particularly helpful to know what worked for you in the course, and what changes may have been helpful for you.
Week 13
The final quiz (Quiz 10) will be out Monday (April 7), and due that evening. As a reminder: your two lowest quiz grades will be dropped when computing your final quiz grade.
Lecture Tuesday is cancelled.
On Thursday we will resume discussion of learning-to-rank and dense retrieval + PyTerrier.
Final Assignments: Assignment 3 is due Tuesday (Apr 8). Assignment 4 will be released 9am Wednesday (Apr 9), and is due next Tuesday (Apr 15).
Readings: See PyTerrier slides in MyCourses and in the PyTerrier tutorial (Parts 2, 3). Additional reading materials are provided with Assignment 4.
Course Evaluation (SmartEvals): The SmartEvals system will ask for anonymous course evaluations in the coming days -- please take a moment to fill this out (at the latest, before Reading Day). This course has been improved over the years due to feedback from students. It is particularly helpful to know what worked for you in the course, and what changes may have been helpful for you.
(Apr 8) Multi-modal search talk for Science + AI. Prof. Zanibbi is giving a short talk on multi-modal search in research papers at a (Physics) Theory + AI Symposium being held Apr 7-8 at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada next week. Other speakers/participants at the symposium include Geoff Hinton (speaker list). Zoom/web links should be available during the symposium for those interested; the meeting is a combination of talks and panel discussions.
Final Research Paper (#3): The third research paper for summarization has been posted on MyCourses. Summaries are due Friday of Week 14 (Apr 18), and will be discussed in-class next Thursday (Apr 17). The topic of the paper is Retrieval Augmented Generation for question answering with Large Language Models (LLMs).
Week 12
The final quiz (Quiz 10) will be out next Monday (April 7), and due that evening. As a reminder: your two lowest quiz grades will be dropped when computing your final quiz grade.
Assignment 3 is due next Tuesday in Week 13 (Apr 8).
Readings: See PyTerrier slides in MyCourses and for Part 1 of the PyTerrier tutorial.
Course Evaluation (SmartEvals): The SmartEvals system will ask for anonymous course evaluations in the coming days -- please take a moment to fill this out (at the latest, before Reading Day). This course has been improved over the years due to feedback from students. It is particularly helpful to know what worked for you in the course, and what changes may have been helpful for you.
Lecture next Tuesday. Prof. Zanibbi is away -- RIT PhD student Bryan Amador will share a video summarizing feedback from Prof. Zanibbi on the project proposals, and then groups will meet individually in-person with Bryan available for questions.
(Apr 8) Multi-modal search talk for Science + AI. On Tuesday next week Prof. Zanibbi is giving a short talk on multi-modal search in research papers at a (Physics) Theory + AI Symposium being held Ape 7-8 at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada next week. Other speakers/participants at the symposium include Geoff Hinton (speaker list). Zoom/web links should be available during the symposium for those interested; the meeting is a combination of talks and panel discussions.
Week 11
Quiz 9 will be out next Monday (March 31), and due that evening.
Reminder: You can submit a revised version of the first paper summary until Thursday at 11:59pm (Mar 27). Remember to add the prefix "REVISED_" to the file name so that we can find your revision.
Project proposal is due on Friday. Try to submit on-time -- we will be discussing course projects in lecture next Thursday, and if you submit very late you may not receive feedback before this discussion.
Assignment 3 will be released this week and due next Friday (Wk 12). The assignment will include an introduction to PyTerrier.
Readings: We will finish up the evaluation metric material from last week. This week the 'readings' are provided in the lecture slides, adapted from PyTerrier tutorials.
Week 10
Quiz 8 will be out next Monday (March 24), and due that evening.
*EXTENSION: The second research paper summary (on SPLADE) is due on Friday (March 21).
*EXTENSION: Project: proposal is due next Friday, Week 11. Please see notes below and materials in MyCourses for additional information.
Syllabus update: A revision policy has been added for research paper summaries and the project proposal in the Syllabus (see the section "Grading Criteria"). This provides is an opportunity to have summaries and proposals regraded after addressing comments (see Syllabus for details).
Readings: See the course schedule for topics and associated readings. We will be using parts of Ch. 3 in the MathIR book this week (on evaluation), along with the Croft text materials on evaluation.
Week 8
*There will be no quiz this week, because there are no classes next week. Enjoy the Spring Break week (next week, Week 9 starting March 10th)!
The Second Research Paper (on SPLADE) has been posted. We discussed the paper last Thursday. Make sure to break the paper apart, record questions, and check other sources (briefly) as needed (see notes in the discord channel). You are strongly encouraged to discuss the paper with other students in the class, but your written summary must be your own work. *Extension: Summaries are now due Tuesday after break (March 18).
Project: Project groups are expected to now be searching the literature and running candidate systems that they find. Make sure to consult the document recommending how to approach the project (provided in the project Google Drive with templates, etc.). The proposal is due Tuesday of Week 11 (2nd Tuesday after spring break).
Readings: See the course schedule for topics and associated readings.
Career Fair is this Wed/Thurs/Fri(?) (Wk 8). Make sure to check the class discord #jobs-coop channel for information related to this, and best of luck.
Week 7
Quiz 7 will be out/due Monday of next week.
Assignment 2 is available, and is due on Friday (Feb 28)
The Second Research Paper (on SPLADE) has been posted. We will discuss this in-class on Thursday -- read the paper and bring notes and questions. Your summary will be due next following Tuesday (March 4, in Wk 8).
Project: Project groups have been selected. Contact your group ASAP and beging searching the literature and running systems. See the additional notes in the document recommending how to approach the project (provided in the project Google Drive with templates, etc.). Starting early will be very helpful for the proposal.
Readings: See the course schedule for topics and associated readings.
Career Fair is next Wed/Thurs/Fri(?) (Wk 8). Make sure to check the class discord #jobs-coop channel for information related to this, and best of luck.
Week 6
Quiz 6 will be out and due Monday of next week.
Assignment 2 is available, and is due next Friday (Wk 7)
The Second Research Paper (on SPLADE) has been posted. We will discuss this in-class next Thursday -- read the paper and prepare notes and questions in advance. Your summary will be due the following Tuesday (March 4, in Wk 8).
Project requirements have been posted. Group sign-ups (through MyCourses, under the "Groups" link) are dueFriday (Feb. 21 @ 11:59pm). Please note: after the deadline, any unassigned students will be randomly placed in a group of less than 3 students automatically by MyCourses.
Reading this week: Please see the course schedule for topics and associated readings for this week.
Week 5
Quiz 5 will be out and due Monday of next week.
Assignment 2 is available, and is due Friday of Wk 7.
Project requirements will be posted by Friday evening, and group sign-ups (through MyCourses, under the "Groups" link) are duenext Friday (Wk 6, Feb. 21 @ 11:59pm). Please note: after the deadline, any unassigned students will be randomly placed in a group of less than 3 students automatically by MyCourses.
Reading this week: Please see the course schedule for readings this week. We will start by finishing up material from Wk 4 on Tuesday, and then moving into the Wk 5 readings from Z&M and Croft.
Week 4
Quiz 4 will be out/due Monday of next week.
Our 1st Research Paper ("Interactions with Generative Information Retrieval Systems" by Zamani et al., 2025) is available in MyCourses. The evaluation criteria and paper to read can be found under "Assignments." Read the paper and bring your notes to class for a discussion on Thursday. Your final summary is due this Friday (Wk 4) at 11:59pm.
Reading this week: Finishing up readings from Wk3, moving on to readings listed for Wekk 4 in the schedule (link above -- more Zobel & Moffat + readings from the Croft textbook).
Week 3
Office Hours this Week: Back to regular schedule, Tues 3:30-5pm, Thurs 10:30am-12pm.
Quiz 2 is due by Monday evening (available in MyCourses). Quiz 3 will be due Monday evening of Wk 4 (next week).
Assignment 1 is due Friday evening.
The 1st Research Paper ("Interactions with Generative Information Retrieval Systems" by Zamani et al., 2025) has been posted on MyCourses. The evaluation criteria and paper to read can be found under "Assignments." Read the paper and bring your notes to class for a discussion next Thursday. Your final summary is due next Friday (Wk 4) at 11:59pm.
Reading this week: Demartini article on using LLMs in relevance assessment + Hearst online text (see sections in Schedule). Zobel & Moffat Secs 3-5 (pp. 8-16), Croft section 5.1-5.3
Week 2
Office Hours this Week: I will hold office hours Tuesday 3:30-4, and 4:30-5pm due to a conflict. Thursday office hour will run from 9:30-11am rather than the usual time, due to another conflict.
Assignment 1 is due Friday of Wk 3 (next week).
Quiz 1 is available in MyCourses, and is due Tuesday at 11:59pm.
Reading this week: Demartini article on using LLMs in relevance assessment + Hearst online text (see sections in Schedule)
Week 1
These are the web pages for the information retrieval coursein the RIT CS department for Spring 2025. This course is cross-listed: CSCI 536 (undergrad) and CSCI 636 (grad). Prof. Zanibbi is the course instructor.
These web pages are used to communicate course information, including news, deadlines, etc. A class discord server will also be used for additional discussion/updates outside of class. The link to join the server will be shared in MyCourses early in Wk 1.
Assignments, projects, and quizzes will be distributed and submitted using MyCourses.
Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00pm - 3:15pm Louise Slaughter Hall, Room 2150(78-2150)
Lectures attendance in-person is strongly recommended. Lectures will be recorded from the instructor's laptop, and available after class through MyCourses (Zoom).
For Wk 1: Reading (for Thursday lecture): Zobel & Moffat pp. 1-8 (Sections 1 and 2) (Update) Quiz 1 will be released and be due Tuesday of Wk 2 (11:59) Assignment 1 will be assigned early in Wk 2.
CSCI 536/636 Information Learning, Spring 2025 RIT Department of Computer Science