[LON-CAPA-users] Support research and win an iPod Shuffle

Gerd Kortemeyer lon-capa-users@mail.lon-capa.org
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:55:22 -0400


Hi,

Lars Hoeppner, whom some of you met at the LON-CAPA Conference this  
year, is working on his master's degree with the Fern-Universitaet  
Hagen in Germany. His topic is community-supported search in an  
educational content pool with sparse metadata, aka LON-CAPA.

There are a number of possible algorithms for community-supported  
search, and the last phase of his project is evaluation by users.

As you are likely setting up your courses this week, please give it a  
whirl.

Login to

  http://s12.lite.msu.edu/

using your normal usernames and password, and by hand changing the  
"Domain" field to your domain. Then go to the course you want to be  
working on and use Search like you normally would.

You get a choice of mechanisms and parameters. Try out a few and  
please evaluate the search results using the

How well do the results meet your expectations?
(bad) 1 2 3 4 5 (good)

field at the top. Please don't forget to "Send".

Note that the time it takes for these searches is not a valid  
reflection of the search time in an actual implementation. Also note  
that the cataloging data is from earlier this summer and may not  
reflect most recent changes. The actual implementation is not going  
to have all the currently available options; the purpose of this  
evaluation is to find the best algorithm. The "start user" needed for  
some search algorithms will eventually be determined automatically  
from your preferences and profile information. Please, for now, just  
use colleagues teaching the same kind of course.

Everyone who submits more than 10 evaluations before the end of  
August automatically enters into a raffle for an iPod Shuffle.

Thanks for your help,

- Gerd.