The concept of relevance in Information Retrieval (IR) has been extensively studied. However, most mainstream IR models have been developed with adult users in mind, assuming cognitive maturity and autonomous interaction. Younger searchers, who increasingly integrate IR systems into their information-seeking practices, differ in cognitive abilities, information needs, and limited digital knowledge, which shape how they judge relevance, often diverging from traditional definitions assumed to work for adults. This calls for a deeper understanding of how this underrepresented group judges online content. In this study, we explore how children interpret and determine relevance when searching for information online in primary school classrooms. As information-seeking in this context is often guided by teachers, we also probe their criteria for relevance. By comparing both perspectives, we uncover points of alignment and divergence. These findings contribute to revisiting the concept of relevance for the primary school context and, more broadly, to the design and evaluation of equitable, context-aware IR systems that support responsible and inclusive information seeking practices.

The rise of digital platforms for accessing online content-from popular search engines to social media sites- has contributed to the (un)intentional propagation of misleading information. This phenomenon, known as Information Disorder, affects individuals and society. Extensive research has been conducted to study and address Information Disorder as it pertains to the general population. Yet, little is known about how children, who have specific needs and behaviours when interacting with digital content, deal with misleading information and how the algorithms, that underlay the information access tools they use, mitigate or exacerbate the issue. Through a systematic literature review, we present research efforts that address or discuss the impact of Information Disorder on children and their overall information-seeking experience. We analyse the literature from various perspectives, including children's behaviour across platforms and the solutions developed to mitigate misleading information. Inspired by the knowledge distilled and gaps identified in our review, we discuss research directions that tackle both technological and human-centred challenges children face when dealing with misleading information, seeking to establish a foundation to mitigate the effects of Information Disorder among children.

The way people seek, access, and use information for learning has changed. Once the primary gateway to information, search engines now share the stage with various digital/social platforms. This change is perhaps more notable among teenagers and has undoubtedly influenced how they browse and select resources to support their learning. To understand their habits and how alternatives to search engines have influenced them, in this work, we explore how high school students conduct online inquiries in the classroom. Our findings reveal that search engines are not always students’ first choice; social networks often play a leading role. This shift has important implications for the design of information retrieval technology, as researchers should consider how teenagers—an understudied population—use this range of tools. In addition, it is critical to foster search and media literacy skills among young users, who increasingly turn to tools not designed to search for information for educational purposes.

We discuss the foundation of a collaborative effort to explore AI's role in supporting (teachers and) children in their learning experiences. We integrate principles of educational psychology, AI, and HCI, and align with best practices in education while undertaking a human-centered focus on design and development that puts the student at the centre and keeps the expert-in-the-loop. Initially, we study assessment items - questions or tasks tied to a learning target. These items vary in complexity, serve as indicators of students' grasp of specific concepts and spotlight areas where support may be needed. This preliminary analysis will help us outline a framework to guide the design and evaluation of AI technology for K-12 education. Such a framework would ensure that assessment item generation technology goes beyond the current one-dimensional approach by incorporating multifaceted, adaptable perspectives that consider the variegated landscape of learners' needs, subject matter complexities, and pedagogical goals.

Information Retrieval (IR) remains an active, fast-paced area of research. However, most advances in IR have predominantly benefited the so-called “classical” users, e.g., English-speaking adults. We envision IR4U2as a forum to spotlight efforts that, while sparse, consider diverse, and often understudied, user groups when designing, developing, assessing, and deploying the IR technologies that directly impact them. The key objectives for IR4U2 are: (1) raise awareness about ongoing efforts focused on IR technologies designed for and used by often understudied user groups, (2) identify challenges and open issues impacting this area of research, (3) ignite discussions to identify common frameworks for future research, and (4) enable cross-fertilization and community-building by sharing lessons learned from research catering to different audiences by researchers and (industry) practitioners across various disciplines.

In this work, we reason how focusing on Information Retrieval (IR) for children and involving them in participatory studies would benefit the IR community. The Child Computer Interaction (CCI) community has embraced the child as a protagonist as their main philosophy, regarding children as informants, co-designers, and evaluators, not just users. Leveraging prior literature, we posit that putting children in the centre of the IR world and giving them an active role could enable the IR community to break free from the preexisting bias derived from interpretations inferred from past use by adult users and the still dominant system-oriented approach. This shift would allow researchers to revisit complex foundational concepts that greatly influence the use of IR tools as part of socio-technical systems in different domains. In doing so, IR practitioners could provide more inclusive, and supportive information access experiences to children and other understudied user groups alike in different contexts.

In this work, we present the results of a preliminary exploration aiming to understand whether the use of ChatGPT in an educational context can be an asset to meet the specific needs of the students. In particular, we focus on the possibility of adapting the responses to online inquiries related to the primary school curriculum to meet the expectations of readers with different literacy levels. The analysis of feedback elicited from children (9- to 10-year-olds) in three 4th grade classrooms indicates that ChatGPT can adapt its responses to the 4th grade level. However, it still needs improvement to reach the right level of readability. Outcomes from this work can inspire future research directions involving technologies like ChatGPT to adapt learning paths to suit a broad range of students with varied cognitive skills. The potential of such tools to support teachers in their effort to adapt to individual learning needs is still to be fully exploited.

The influence of ChatGPT and similar models on education is being increasingly discussed. With the current level of enthusiasm among users, ChatGPT is envisioned as having great potential. As generative models are unpredictable in terms of producing biased, harmful, and unsafe content, we argue that they should be comprehensively tested for more vulnerable groups, such as children, to understand what role they can play and what training and supervision are necessary. Here, we present the results of a preliminary exploration aiming to understand whether ChatGPT can adapt to support children in completing information discovery tasks in the education context. We analyze ChatGPT responses to search prompts related to the 4th grade classroom curriculum using a variety of lenses (e.g., readability and language) to identify open challenges and limitations that must be addressed by interdisciplinary communities.

Focused on children and the learning context, we argue for the importance of designing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that take a holistic view of their target users. Rather than prioritize system performance, these smart technologies can be tuned to assist users throughout the task completion process. We argue that considering children's diverse cultural, social, and emotional backgrounds is critical to pursuing inclusive and adaptive technologies that foster children's personalised learning and development.

This paper contributes to the discussion initiated in a recent SIGIR paper describing a gap in the information retrieval (IR) literature on query understanding–where they come from and whether they serve their purpose. Particularly the connection between query variability and search engines regarding consistent and equitable access to all users. We focus on a user group typically underserved: children. Using preliminary experiments (based on logs collected in the classroom context) and arguments grounded in children IR literature, we emphasize the importance of dedicating research efforts to interpreting queries formulated by children and the information needs they elicit. We also outline open problems and possible research directions to advance knowledge in this area, not just for children but also for other often-overlooked user groups and contexts.

Informed by existing literature, in addition to lessons learned from ongoing research work pertaining to online information seeking, in this contribution, we discuss our view of how information pollution affects a critical yet understudied user group: children. We first highlight the need to take into account the unique characteristics of children’s search context, which can be defined in terms of various factors, from children’s age, abilities, skills, and cognitive development to the fuzzy line separating learning and fun. We then describe the importance of good design in assisting children in the different roles they play as searchers so that they can recognize and distinguish harmful and helpful content. Lastly, we discuss guidelines for effectively engaging teachers, parents, and children in the design, introduction, and use of search tools to support young users not only in accessing the information available online but also taking advantage of and learning safely from it. The focus on children not only helps us move forward to help a target group but, more importantly, it is a great starting point for further investigating a broad range of information pollution issues.

The role that technology plays in supporting children at school and at home is more prominent than ever before due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This has prompted us to focus the 6th International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommender and Information Retrieval Systems (KidRec) workshop on what the lasting changes will be to the design and development of child information retrieval systems. After two years, are information retrieval systems used more in and out of the classroom? Are they more interactive, more or less personalized? What is the impact on the research and business community? Are there long-term and unexpected changes on the design, ethics, and algorithms? The primary goal of our workshop continues to be to build community by bringing together researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders from various backgrounds and disciplines to understand and advance information retrieval systems for children.

In the classroom, search tools enable students to access online resources. While these tools have many benefits in theory, in practice there are also ethical issues to consider. In this article, we discuss a number of ethics-related problems teachers are faced with and they need to find solutions for. Based on our own research experience developing and deploying information discovery tools for the classroom (both in a traditional classroom setting and on the Internet due to the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19), we share insights about ethics and the role of the expert-in-the-loop, teachers, both as co-design partners and liaisons between search tools and students. Furthermore, we introduce a set of guidelines, EMILIA, to assist teachers in recognizing and reflecting on ethical issues that arise from their use of search tools in the classroom.

We study the effect of visual cues on children searching in the classroom. We do so by examining whether Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) enhanced with emojis, unlike standard SERP, affect children's search behaviour. To capture search behaviour, we use well-known metrics, in addition to users' success in identifying relevant results on SERP. Outcomes from our work reveal that a one-size-fits-All approach for SERP does not befit students who are searching for learning. Thus, we discuss the implications of our findings and suggest directions for future research, focused on the design and evaluation of information retrieval systems that can better support the classroom setting.