Overview of EIREX 2010: Computing

TL;DR

EIREX 2010 introduced an experimental approach to teaching Information Retrieval in undergraduate courses, emphasizing real-world scenarios, laboratory experiments, and collaborative resource creation to enhance IR education.

Contribution

This paper presents the first EIREX experiment, demonstrating a novel educational methodology for IR courses through hands-on experimentation and resource sharing.

Findings

Created a new test collection for IR education

Assessed the reliability of the test collection

Promoted collaboration among universities

Abstract

The first Information Retrieval Education through Experimentation track (EIREX 2010) was run at the University Carlos III of Madrid, during the 2010 spring semester. EIREX 2010 is the first in a series of experiments designed to foster new Information Retrieval (IR) education methodologies and resources, with the specific goal of teaching undergraduate IR courses from an experimental perspective. For an introduction to the motivation behind the EIREX experiments, see the first sections of [Urbano et al., 2011]. For information on other editions of EIREX and related data, see the website at http://ir.kr.inf.uc3m.es/eirex/. The EIREX series have the following goals: a) to help students get a view of the Information Retrieval process as they would find it in a real-world scenario, either industrial or academic; b) to make students realize the importance of laboratory experiments in Computer Science and have them initiated in their execution and analysis; c) to create a public repository of resources to teach Information Retrieval courses; d) to seek the collaboration and active participation of other Universities in this endeavor. This overview paper summarizes the results of the EIREX 2010 track, focusing on the creation of the test collection and the analysis to assess its reliability.