[Asis-l] UW iSchool talk: Evaluating Interactive Info Systems in Context: a unifying paradigm (Speaker: Prof. Micheline Beaulieu, Sheffield Univ, UK)

[Efthimis N. Efthimiadis]

Title: Evaluating Interactive Information Systems in Context: a unifying paradigm 

Speaker: Professor Micheline Beaulieu, University of Sheffield, UK 

Date: Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Time: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: Mary Gates Hall 420


Abstract:

Information research over the past fifty years has focused on three distinct perspectives namely: Information Seeking Behaviour, laboratory based Information Retrieval and the evaluation of information systems, and Interactive Information Retrieval. Although some effort has been made in IR evaluation research to accommodate both the user-centric social science paradigm of Interactive Information Retrieval and the system-centric scientific experimental paradigm of IR, as exemplified by the Okapi and TREC experiments, it has proven to be very difficult to address let alone resolve the fundamental tensions between the two approaches. However more recently the concept of `information interaction in context' has emerged as a possible alternative approach or framework for bridging the gap between the traditional evaluation divide. In this talk, Professor Beaulieu will explore what is meant by context in IR evaluation and how the concept is beginning to be operationalized in empirical studies. The discussion will draw on examples of experimental designs and settings that are leading the way in taking account of the wider aspects of interaction, cognition, tasks and users in information retrieval and assess the potential for information interaction in context to serve as a unifying paradigm for the evaluation of information systems. 

Bio: 

Micheline Beaulieu is Professor in Information Science, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Planning at the University of Sheffield, and Chair of the Informatics Collaboratory of the Social Sciences.  She was the 
former Head of Department at City and Sheffield Universities. 

Canadian born, Professor Beaulieu spent her early career as a librarian in university libraries in the U.K. and then progressed from being a mature doctoral student in the late eighties to gain a Personal Chair and become Head of the Department of Information Science at City University in 1996. She then joined the University of Sheffield to head the top ranking research Department of Information Studies and over the past ten years she has taken a leading role in promoting interdisciplinary research in the Social Sciences and in developing a strategic management approach to academic planning. 

Her research in interactive information retrieval focuses on models of information seeking behaviour, human-computer interaction and the development of evaluation methods for information retrieval systems. She has published extensively in the field, contributing principally in the design of the interactive evaluative studies for the pioneering best match experimental retrieval system Okapi, and as a founding participant of the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) Interactive Track. 




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Efthimis N. Efthimiadis <efthimis at u.washington.edu>
Associate Professor    
The Information School, University of Washington       
Suite 370 Mary Gates Hall, Box 352840     
Seattle, WA 98195-2840, USA     
Tel: (off.) 206-616-6077, (sch) 206-685-9937, fax. 206-616-3152 
http://faculty.washington.edu/efthimis
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