Teaching big data through project-based learning in computational linguistics and information retrieval

In Project Based Learning (PBL), students acquire knowledge just-in-time while completing a large project driven by a particular question. We demonstrate that this approach is particularly well suited to courses in two computer science (CS) domains pertaining to Big Data: Computational Linguistics and Information Retrieval. The courses presented here proved successful, as evidenced by both the high quality of the student projects and the positive responses on end-of-semester surveys.