Designing for users: an holistic approach to teaching Information Retrieval

Many Information Retrieval courses take a reductionist approach: reducing the complexity of Information Retrieval systems into a series of decomposed modules for indexing, retrieval, and results presentation. In this short paper we describe a complementary approach for practical coursework that encourages students to take a holistic approach to thinking about Information Retrieval systems. This approach helps students to consider Information Retrieval systems as a whole system, the potential users of a specific Information Retrieval system, and appropriate evaluation approaches.