1st. Int. Workshop on Teaching and Learning of Information Retrieval

En Londres, en enero del 2007, se realizó el primer Workshop sobre Teaching and Learning of Information Retrieval. Me gusta que la disciplina ya se esté asentando dentro de los niveles de grado académico, siempre pensé que en algún momento tendría que llegar al nivel de importancia de base de datos, y luego en una segunda movida, debería surgir un área que integre a las dos, es decir al tratamiento de información estructurada y a la no (o débilmente) estructurada.

Les comento que en la página del evento están los papers a disposición de quien desee leerlos. Estuve revisando algunos y me interesó el debate propuesto por el trabajo de Stefano Mizzaro "¿Teaching of Web Information Retrieval: Web First or IR First?", del cual copio su resumen:

"When teaching Web Information retrieval (IR), a teacher has two alternatives: (i) to teach the classical pre-Web IR issues first and present the Web specific issues later; or (ii) to teach directly the Web IR discipline per se.

The first approach has the advantages of building on prerequisite knowledge, of presenting the historical development of the discipline, and probably appears more natural to most lecturers, who have followed the historical development of the field.

Conversely, the second approach has the advantage of concentrating on a more modern view of the field, and probably leads to a higher motivation in the students, since the more appealing Web issues are dealt with at course start.

I will discuss these issues, I will mention the approaches followed in the (rather few) Web IR books available, I will make some comparisons with the teaching of related disciplines, and I will also summarize my experience and some feedback from my students (I have been teaching a Web IR course for two Master's degrees in Computer Science and Information Technology at Udine University for the last two years; I had about twenty students each year; and I followed the first approach)."