Date/Time: Tuesday, April 16, 2019. Talk is from 10-11 AM. Extended Q&A from 11-11:30 AM. Open meeting with graduate students from 1:30-2:30 PM. (location for grad student meeting TDB)

Location: GDC 6.302

TITLE:  The Joy of Finding Out: Adventures in teaching people how to do online research

ABSTRACT:

I've been teaching people how to be more effective online researchers for the past decade. In that time, I've taught thousands of people (think students, librarians, professional researchers, and just plain folks) how to find out what they seek through Google (and many other online resources and tools). Just as importantly, I also teach a good deal of when the researcher should switch from online to offline content (and back). This talk covers my experiences in learning how to teach these skills, and what I've learned from direct interactions with my students and from various studies I've run in the lab and with live search traffic. I'll discuss my MOOC (PowerSearchingWithGoogle.com), which has had over 4M students, my live classes, and various publications in paper, book, and video formats. I can tell you which methods work best, and why. I'll also talk about the mental models that people have of search systems (and the ways in which those are often incorrect).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: 

Daniel Russell is Google's Senior Research Scientist for Search Quality and User Happiness in Mountain View. He earned his PhD in computer science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence. These days he realizes that amplifying human intelligence is his real passion. His day job is understanding how people search for information, and the ways they come to learn about the world through Google. Dan's current research is to understand how human intelligence and artificial intelligence can work together to better than either as a solo intelligence. His 20% job is teaching the world to search more effectively. His MOOC, PowerSearchingWithGoogle.com, is currently hosting over 3,000 learners / week in the course. In the past 3 years, 4 million students have attended his online search classes, augmenting their intelligence with AI. His instructional YouTube videos have a cumulative runtime of over 350 years (24 hours/day; 7 days/week; 365 weeks/year).

*This event is joint with Computer Science and School of Information.

Matt Lease; ml@utexas.edu