Leveraging User Profile Attributes For Improving Pedagogical Accuracy of Learning Pathways
Leveraging User Profile Attributes For Improving Pedagogical Accuracy of Learning Pathways
Leveraging User Profile Attributes For Improving Pedagogical Accuracy of Learning Pathways
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Corresponding author: Tel.: +82513201724, Email: dkkang@dongseo.ac.kr
Learners may wish to have different accomplishments after them[7].
completion of a learning resource. Secondly, the most 5)K-means clustering- Intuitively, what clustering techniques
preferred(rated) learning path may not be pedagogically the aim to achieve is finding data points which are more similar to
most adequate [3]. Thus, the educational specific needs and one another than the rest of the points in n-dimensional feature
information seeking tasks of stakeholders, make the design of space. K-means is a widely adopted clustering method that
learning resource recommendation quite complex [16]. starts out by creating 'k' different clusters and assigning each
data point to one of the clusters based on some standard
Our statement of contribution in this paper is to develop a
distance measure like Euclidean, Pearson correlation etc. At
system that can effectively categorize resources based on
every iteration, centroid of the clusters are updated with the
inherent factors that affect student's learning. We aim to
mean value of the data points assigned to that cluster. The idea
extract such learning domain specific attributes of learners,
is to minimize intra cluster distance and maximize inter cluster
that have been discovered from past theoretical research. Such
distance. Proposed in [22], K means clustering has been a
critical factors belong to an entirely different context and play
widely studied unsupervised machine learning algorithm.
a much more significant role, as compared to basic profile
6)Apriori principle- Originally presented in [23], it optimizes
information like name, age, sex and other demographic factors.
association analysis in large scale machine learning. Either for
We believe that our system has the potential of improving
finding out frequent itemsets or discovering association rules
alignment of learner's preferences with the learning resources
in large datasets, apriori principle is applied to reduce the
they are using. Also, it could increase learning efficiency,
number of possible interesting itemsets. Measures like support
through a more structured guidance that is well customized
and confidence levels are established to evaluate the
and adapted to the learner's objectives.
associations discovered. Apriori principle says that if an
This paper is structured as follows: In section II.I, the itemset is infrequent, all it's supersets will also be infrequent.
technical terms used are defined. Then, in the following At every iteration of the algorithm, candidate itemsets are
sections II.II and II.III, the user profile attributes are described pruned if their support levels are below the minimum support.
and challenges are presented. The hypothesis, problem The process of joining lower order itemsets based on this
statement and the proposed method is described in detail in criteria is repeated, until no more itemsets can be created
section III. Section IV talks about the experimental results and further.
discussions. Prior work is discussed in section V. The 7)Non negative matrix factorization(NMF)- Formally
conclusion and future work follow at the end in section VI and defined in [24] for learning parts of objects and combining
VII. them to get an aggregate representation, NMF derives it's roots
from linear algebra. The basic idea of NMF is that it
decomposes matrix A into two matrices B(features) and
II.I. PRELIMINARIES
C(weights) and also enforces a non negative constraint on the
entries of these matrices. In machine learning, it is used as a
1)Learning Management system(LMS)- It is a system that
feature extraction algorithm, where the decomposed matrices
assists learners in finding learning resources and guides them
represent the extracted features in the observations and their
to make the best choices in managing these resources. It also
importance or relevance to the observed data.
supports these learners in achieving their goals in a specific
domain. A good literature review of LMS can be found in [4].
2)Learning pathway- A set of learning objects like books,
multimedia(audio recordings, videos), images, slides etc which
II.II. USER PROFILE ATTRIBUTES
are packaged and organized in a sequence form a learning
pathway. A formal definition of the same can be found in [5]. User model is a distinctive feature of adaptive systems, as this
3)Transfer Learning- The process of applying concepts and information allows the system to behave differently for
skills learned in one domain to another related or disjoint different users [20]. In our work, we consider the following
domain in different scenarios is called transfer learning [6]. user profile attributes for incorporating into the proposed
The absence of a guide to assist learners in providing a good machine learning framework to tag learning resources. The
cross domain application context, makes an understanding of objective is to improve the pedagogical accuracy and
the research issues associated with transfer learning quite adequacy of TEL RecSys, by suggesting resources that reflect
difficult. the learner's objective and form a close match to his learning
4)Pedagogical adequacy(accuracy)- It is the kind of requirements. By doing so, the learner can be kept motivated
education that focuses equally on five different aspects of to complete his learning activities in an effective and efficient
learning- student centred tutelage with an understanding of his manner.
educational background, strategic course instruction design to
maximize learning, evaluation of student's advancement 1)Skill level- This includes current competency level of the
towards the course learning objectives for knowledge learner and the target skill level that is to be achieved. Based
retention, use of different teaching strategies, awareness on Bloom's taxonomy and CDIO report[8], the following
regarding teaching challenges and knowing ways to handle proficiency levels are identified:
Level 1- To have experienced or been exposed 4)Preferred Presentation style- Because of the difference in
to(Knowledge)- refers to the process of recalling cognitive processing , we consider visual, textual and auditory
primer knowledge on a subject presentation styles. More specifically, we include:
Level 2- To be able to participate in and contribute Portable document format(pdf) documents
to(Comprehension)- refers to the ability to describe Power points
and define what is learnt Web pages(html)
Level 3- To be skilled in the practice or Videos
implementation of(Application)- refers to the process Audio books and resources
of execution of concepts An alternative to the above styles include presentation of
Level 4- To be able to understand and examples, presentation of theoretical knowledge and practical
explain(Analysis)- refers to the process of analysis, examples [10]. Over and above all these explicit factors that
interpretation and discussion on results can be gathered by an initial questionnaire, other implicit
Level 5- To be able to lead or innovate in(Synthesis)- factors like effort of the learner and his willingness to obey
refers to the process of creation of thoughts and and follow the recommendations can be measured during
development of new ideas course progress [11][12].
Level 6- To be able to assess and evaluate(Evaluate)-
refers to the process of estimation and evaluation of
the concepts learnt II.III. CHALLENGES AND MOTIVATION
2)Preferred Learning strategy- This basically refers to the
Though technology alone cannot solve complex problems like
intended way of understanding information, solving problems,
checking and evaluating the knowledge gained. Based on the providing universal and high quality education, but it can
strategic instruction model proposed by [9], we have included surely improve the quality of solutions and their impact on
the following five learning strategies for the purpose of our learning. This is the driving factor behind our work.
study:
Assignment Completion Strategy- designed to enable 1)We notice that a major issue in TEL RecSys is the use of
students to complete and hand in the assignments on only learner ratings, reviews and basic profile information for
time providing tailored learning pathways. Other critical factors
related to student's academic profile and interests are left out.
Test-Taking Strategy- designed to be used while
This leads to inaccurate and unsatisfactory recommendations
taking classroom(physical/virtual) tests, with students most of the times. However, because learning takes place in
allocating time and certain priority to each section of extremely diverse and rich environments, we include the other
the test dimensions as stated in Section II.I to make the learning model
Mnemonic Strategy- designed to help students more helpful and close to real life behaviour. Because these
remember complex concepts using simple user specific attributes do not have a direct link with the
representations(diagrams) and mnemonic codes. learning resources and due to the unavailability of tagged data
for these resources, there is a need to incorporate such
Self-Questioning Strategy- designed to help students parameters into the recommendation framework. And our
create their own motivation while reading by creating proposed solution finds a way to fill this missing link by using
questions in mind, predicting answers, searching, machine learning algorithms to accomplish the task at hand.
verifying and paraphrasing them
Error Monitoring Strategy- designed to help students 2)The other challenge while applying machine learning to
independently detect and correct errors make appropriate sense of the user profile attributes is that,
Teamwork Strategy- designed to provide a framework though skill levels and learning time can be inferred
for organizing and completing specific tasks in small numerically, learning strategy and presentation style are very
groups nominal in nature. Deriving similarities between them is quite
3) Available Learning time - This includes the number of difficult numerically. We cannot represent such nominal
time units(hours per day and number of weeks), and indicates variables on a continuous scale and perform arithmetic
the time allotted for the purpose of study in an informal operations on them. For example, it's difficult to comprehend,
educational setting. how similar or dissimilar test taking and mnemonic learning
strategies are, without any training data. This fact has useful
implications, because distance measures like Euclidean,
Pearson correlation etc. can't be applied to address such a III.II. SOLUTION & APPROACH FOLLOWED
situation. Thus, there is a need to characterize the data further
to leverage these nominal attributes. Step 1- Alg. "build_learner_subset"
input- learner set
output- learner subset based on rating threshold criteria
a. l L build V U | riy 0 , 0 10 and 0 N (i=1
y