Carnegie Mellon University
Language Technologies Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
4502 Newell Simon Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-8213
Phone: +1 (412) 268-4525
Fax: +1 (412) 268-6298 (fax)
Email:
WWW: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~callan/
Jamie Callan
Carnegie Mellon University
Language Technologies Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
4502 Newell Simon Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-8213
Phone: +1 (412) 268-4525
Fax: +1 (412) 268-6298 (fax)
Email:
WWW: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~callan/
Information retrieval, information literacy, K-12 education.
The goal of this research is to improve the abilities of K-12 students to find, evaluate, and organize information available on the Internet. These skills comprise a significant subset of the Information Literacy skills that Library Science teaches. The approach consists of building a Web search interface in which Information Literacy skills are matched to Information Retrieval (IR) tools in a way that teaches skills while helping students locate information on the Internet. Improved queries are created from the student’s information need, supporting information from the surrounding educational environment, and query expansion from educationally-focused databases. Information filtering techniques identify, and if desired eliminate, retrieved information at the wrong grade-level or containing inappropriate content. Analysis of results is supported by extracting best document passages, frequent concepts, and proper names. Result sets are organized by clustering similar documents. Content evaluation is supported by citation analysis, and additional searches for supporting information.
The results of the research is tools, techniques, and tutorials that improve the Information Literacy skills of K-12 students, specifically their abilities to locate, evaluate, and organize information available in a disorganized and noisy medium (the Internet). Students are trained evaluation as an integral part of the information seeking process, and to evaluate every piece of information they find to determine whether it meets their needs with respect to recency, authority, and other Information Literacy criteria. Educators and librarians believe that these skills are a key component of independent, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.
About 100 fourth grade and 60 third grade students were trained in the first year of the project. About 300 fourth grade students were trained in the second year of the project. Example tasks include finding and evaluating information for history (ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, Mesopotamia), geography, and other projects that match the curricular needs of the elementary schools in which we are working.
This project is a joint effort between researchers in Computer Science (Callan), Education (Raker), and Library Science (Lewellen). One of its goals is to establish a long-term research relationship to address the use of information technology and the Internet in K-12 education.
In the first year of the project the emphasis was on extending the initial prototype search interface and gaining experience in working with students. IR software modules developed in other projects for adults (e.g., query expansion) were customized for use by young students and new components were developed. The search interface was installed in the library at the Neil Pepin Elementary School in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Tutorials were developed that introduce teachers and students to Internet searching and Information Literacy skills. The software and tutorials were tested in four fourth grade classes (approximately 100 students). The lessons were also tested with about 60 third grade students in an elementary school in Agawam, Massachusetts. An evaluation methodology was developed that indicates the extent to which students are learning the desired Information Literacy skills.
Progress during the second year of the project was hampered by the transfer of the PI and the project from the University of Massachusetts to Carnegie Mellon University. Software development activities were delayed while funds were in transition. Old lessons were redesigned based on experience from the prior year, and several new lessons were developed. A sequence of eight one-hour "Internet and Information Literacy" lessons was taught by the PI and a volunteer teacher to about 300 fourth grade students in three elementary schools in the Pittsburgh area.
Information Retrieval (IR) software helps a person find information in a large, usually unstructured, text database. The best known part of the process is the search engine that determines which documents match the query that specifies an information need. However, equally important are tools that help a person specify the information need (e.g., by suggesting related words and phrases), browsing tools, and tools that summarize, organize and visualize the documents that are returned.
Information Literacy is the set of skills required to find, evaluate, organize, and synthesize (use) information. Information Literacy has traditionally been studied as a part of Library Science. Tools for finding information in a library include card catalogs, and indexing by a controlled vocabulary. Information used by librarians for evaluation includes citation patterns, the publisher's reputation, the author's credentials, and date of publication.