Tool Based Learning: A Classroom Guide for Information Retrieval

Students today have instant access to information through technology and the web, and they are able to manage their own acquisition of knowledge through informal learning, As a result, traditional teaching and learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students and motivating them to achieve the desired goals. Today's students are presented with content-centric assignments that meet standards but lack a real-world context and opportunities for active participation. So a step was initiated to enhance the student learning by introducing tool based learning methodology, which provides the platform for better understanding of real world problems and able to develop deeper knowledge of the subject they are studying.

In this paper we discuss how we carried out the process of tool based learning approach for information retrieval(IR) course, This methodology looks at building a prototype for information retrieval applications which confine to recommendations, classifications or clustering based technics and using web as a medium for building up good interactive user friendly applications. This TBL provides a flavour of combining different technics of IR, where students need to have active participation; the overall results show the better performance in their thinking and problem solving skills. The semester end results reveal that they have achieved a good understanding of the concepts, techniques and tools that were used in the course to develop prototype applications.