Coursera - Text Retrieval and Search Engines Review

Text Retrieval and Search Engines is the second course in Coursera's new data mining specialization offered by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The course covers a variety of topics in text data mining and natural language processing including text retrieval, query ranking and evaluation methods, methods and the basics of recommender systems. Grading is based entirely on 4 weekly quizzes comprised of 10 multiple choice questions. You only get 1 attempt on the quizzes.

The weekly content in Text Retrieval and Search Engines consists of around 10 video lectures that range from 5 to 20 minutes followed by a short 10 question quiz. If that sounds like a lot of lecture per question, it is, and there are no in-lecture quizzes to reinforce concepts as you go along. The lectures themselves are definitely a step up from the first course in the specialization, Pattern Discovery in Data Mining. The professor isn't hard to understand this time around and he explains concepts well enough to grasp them without having to re-watch videos. As with many of Coursera's other 4-week specializations, however, lectures sometimes turn into information dumps where the professor ends up reading off slides. The course does have a C++ programming assignment which was nice to see.

Text Retrieval and Search Engines is a decent course that is worth a look if you are interested in text data mining and search engines. Although the lectures are lackluster, they have some good information. If you're planning on getting a verified certificate, it is a good idea to try the practice quizzes before submitting the real one.

I give this course 2.75 out of 5 stars: Fair.