LIS7610 / CSC7481 Project Plan Assignment

Students may elect to join a project team formed by the instructor, or they may elect to complete a project that they design either individually or with one or more (but preferably no more than five) other students from the same course. Ph.D. students and research-track master's students are highly recommended to do a research project individually or in a small group. They do not need to follow the instructions for this operationally-oriented project, but need to talk to the instructor about their plans no later than the 4th week (when this assignment is due). Some interesting research ideas can be found here . Students are welcome to use Moodle to introduce themselves to the class and to discuss project ideas.

Student-designed projects can be either research-oriented (leading to an academic paper) or operationally oriented (leading to a complete working system). Students who elect to design their own project should meet with the instructor no later than the 4th class session (and preferably much earlier) to discuss their ideas. They will then be required to prepare a complete project plan with milestones comparable to those specified for team projects and to submit it by the due date for this assignment.

Instructor-designed project are operationally oriented. Students who elect to be assigned by the instructor to a project team will need to turn in answers to the questionnaire below by the due date of this assignment. Project team assignments will be announced at the start of the next class session.

LIS7610 Projects

1. exploring thoroughly and deeply advanced functions of an online IR system (such as Medline), and understanding how it is built,
2. studying new IR systems (such as MEDIE) to explore new search/interaction methods (such as semantic search, classified/clustered rank list), and compare with old search/interaction methods (such as keyword search, rank list),
3. conducting a literature review on a topic that is related to information retrieval,
4. any project that is defined by you and approved by the instructor.

CSC7481 Projects

1. Search system design and implementation (1-2 students)
2. User experience design and implementation (1-2 students)
3. Batch evaluation design and batch evaluation (1 student)
4. Interactive evaluation design and interactive evaluation (1 student)

1. Build a system to search the W3C mailing list collection.
2. Build a system that supports use of the "State Department Cables" collection that was recently released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by historians.
3. Build a system to search the Enron email collection.
4. Build a system to help the university's public relations office rapidly respond to media requests for comments from faculty members on events for which they have particular expertise by taking advantage of papers and Web pages in which faculty members write about topics in which they have expertise.

1. What would be your first and second choices for a project (selected from the four listed above)?
2. What would be your first, second, and third choices for your principal role on your project team (selected from the four listed above)?
3. Briefly describe your computer programming background, including programming languages that you know. This need not be extensive -- even a course in high school is worth mentioning.
4. For LIS 7610 students, have you completed LIS 7002 Information Services (a general information access course), and LIS 7013 Evaluation of Information Systems?
5. Any other comments that you wish to have considered.

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Last update: August 17 2011.