Teaching key topics in computer science and information systems through a web search engine project

  • Authors:
  • Michael Chau;Zan Huang;Hsinchun Chen

  • Affiliations:
  • The University of Hong Kong;The University of Arizona;The University of Arizona

  • Venue:
  • Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC)
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Advances in computer and Internet technologies have made it more and more important for information technology professionals to acquire experience in a variety of aspects, including new technologies, system integration, database administration, and project management. To provide students with a chance to acquire such skills, we designed a project called "Build Your Search Engine in 90 Days," in which students were required to build a domain-specific Web search engine in a semester. In this paper we review the tools and resources available to students and report our experiences in having students to work on this project in a course at the University of Arizona. We also review two tools, called AI Spider and AI Indexer, we developed for students in this project. We highlight a few search engines that were created by the students and suggest some future directions in improving the tools and expanding the project.