Evaluation: Thinking Outside the (Search) Box

Evaluation of IR systems has typically focused on the system and specifically assessing the quality of a ranked list of results with respect to a query. However, IR functionality is typically just one component amongst many that are used to help support users' wider information seeking activities. Many systems that include a search box also provide features, such as faceted lists, subject hierarchies, visualizations and recommendations to help users find information. In this paper I discuss experiences gained from developing a system to support exploration and discovery in digital cultural heritage. In particular I focus on the development of system components to support search and navigation and how the different components were evaluated within the development life-cycle of the project. The importance of taking a holistic approach to evaluation, as well as utilising evaluation approaches from domains other than IR, is emphasized. In short, we need to be thinking outside the (search) box when it comes to evaluation in IR

Thinking outside the search box: redefining roles for catalogers in an academic library [slides]

Slides from a presentation on the changing role of the cataloger in academic libraries. Delivered June 24, 2012 at the ALCTS Metadata Interest Group meeting at the ALA Annual conference held in Anaheim, CA. Co-presented by Anna Craft and David Gwynn

Thinking about Attention in Games: Backward and Forward Induction

Behavioral economics improves economic analysis by using psychological regularity to suggest limits on rationality and self-interest (e.g. Camerer and Loewenstein 2003). Expressing these regularities in formal terms permits productive theorizing, suggests new experiments, can contribute to psychology, and can be used to shape economic policies which make normal people better off

Embodied Metaphors and Creative “Acts”

Creativity is a highly sought after skill. To inspire people’s creativity, prescriptive advice in the form of metaphors abound: We are encouraged to think outside the box, to consider the problem on one hand, then on the other hand, and to put two and two together to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving. In five studies, findings revealed that both physically and psychologically embodying creative metaphors promote fluency, flexibility, and/or originality in problem-solving. Going beyond prior research that focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes conducive for generating previously unknown ideas and connections

Assessment for learning? Thinking outside the (black) box

This article draws on a survey of 83 teachers, to explore the concepts of ‘assessment for learning’, ‘assessment’ and ‘learning’. ‘Assessment for learning’ is categorized as meaning: monitoring pupils’ performance against targets or objectives; using assessment to inform next steps in teaching and learning; teachers giving feedback for improvement; (teachers) learning about children’s learning; children taking some control of their own learning and assessment; and turning assessment into a learning event. Conceptions of assessment include assessment-as-measurement and assessment-as-inquiry. These conceptions are related to two conceptions of learning: learningas- attaining-objectives and learning-as-the-construction-of-knowledge. The conceptions of assessment-as-measurement and learning-as-attaining-objectives are dominant in English educational policy today. The article suggests that these conceptions need to be challenged and expanded, since conceptions held by those who have power in education determine what sort of assessment and learning happen in the classroom, and therefore the quality of the student’s learning processes and products

Mass and Mission: Enacting God\u27s Mission in the Christian Assembly Today

(Excerpt) I doubt that I need to underscore the ferment surrounding the matters that are the theme of this year\u27s Institute: worship and mission. The practice of worship in our congregations has become fragmented by multiple and competing proposals for what should happen when we gather. As a teacher of worship, the questions and discussions I encounter day by day reveal a general distrust of conventional liturgical practice and a genuine hunger for something-anything-that will engage and enliven people at worship in our time and place. There is no simple and direct approach to matters of worship-this is what we do, this is where it comes from, this is what is means, this is how to do it-with people lining up to receive authoritative pronouncements. There is real engagement with fundamental questions and a willingness to consider the value of our historic liturgical inheritance, but there is less and less common practice or shared experience of worship to draw on and little consensus about which direction to head

The Substance of Gloup

An essay on Gloup, the Gloucestershire group of concrete poets, including dom sylvester houedard (dsh), Ken Cox, John Furnival, concentrating in particular on the relationship between Cox and houedard and looking at the implications of this radical legacy for contemporary thought and practice. INDEX|press is a small artist run magazine and gallery programme based in Stroud with a radical international programme