Courseware, training and curriculum in information retrieval

This workshop is designed to educate interested members of the IR research community on current approaches to information visualization and visual retrieval interfaces. The quickly advancing research field of information visualization helps users acquire the ability to assess retrieved items in the aggregate quickly and efficiently. In a visual retrieval interface, maps of relationships among retrieved items are displayed graphically in two or three dimensions, offering visual clues to users in modifying searches, selecting groups of documents for examination textually, or selecting individual items as seeds for a new search. Approaches and methods vary by the complexity of dimensions or variables used to organize the data into visual patterns. At one end of this spectrum are systems which organize data by axes of time and subject. At the opposite end are systems which organize data by rational functions of object similarity using techniques originally applied to the mapping of bibliometric spaces. The workshop is organized around presentations focusing on the number of dimensions (or variables) used in the effort to assist the user in aggregate data comprehension. The workshop will be continued on Friday to set up and kickoff FADIVA-Net, a Network of Excellence which is meant to become the successor for the FADIVA working group on Foundation of Advanced Information Visualization during the next three years. This organizational framework will foster research and cooperation in the field of advanced information visualization. Participants interested in this activity should state their interest in future participation in this international group during registration with the workshop. The meeting will begin with 2 hours of presentations: Activities of the SIGIR Education Committee Aids to teaching about evaluation Hypertext and hypermedia requirements Needs in Europe and Asia Requirements of potential employers of those trained in the IR field The rest of the morning will deal with the problem of defining an IR curriculum: what courses can be agreed upon at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels (and at similar levels in non-US-type educational systems), and what " knowledge modules " can be defined and put together in several ways to suit a variety of course sequences. At the end of the morning session the workshop will break into groups so that each course and knowledge module can be covered by those best suited. Initial discussions can begin over lunch. After lunch, each workshop group will meet in a separate room. During a 2 hour period …