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1. Scalable and Equitable Math Problem Solving Strategy Prediction in Big Educational Data

   Shakya, A. ; Rus, V. ; Venugopal, D. ( July 2023 , Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Educational Data Mining, International Educational Data Mining Society)

   Understanding a student's problem-solving strategy can have a significant impact on effective math learning using Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and Adaptive Instructional Systems (AISs). For instance, the ITS/AIS can better personalize itself to correct specific misconceptions that are indicated by incorrect strategies, specific problems can be designed to improve strategies and frustration can be minimized by adapting to a student's natural way of thinking rather than trying to fit a standard strategy for all. While it may be possible for human experts to identify strategies manually in classroom settings with sufficient student interaction, it is not possible to scale this up to big data. Therefore, we leverage advances in Machine Learning and AI methods to perform scalable strategy prediction that is also fair to students at all skill levels. Specifically, we develop an embedding called MVec where we learn a representation based on the mastery of students. We then cluster these embeddings with a non-parametric clustering method where each cluster contains instances that have approximately symmetrical strategies. The strategy prediction model is trained on instances sampled from these clusters ensuring that we train the model over diverse strategies. Using real world large-scale student interaction datasets from MATHia, we show that our approach can scale up to achieve high accuracy by training on a small sample of a large dataset and also has predictive equality, i.e., it can predict strategies equally well for learners at diverse skill levels. 

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2. Deep Learning vs. Bayesian Knowledge Tracing: Student Models for Interventions.

   Mao, Y. ( January 2018 , Journal of educational data mining)

   Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) is a commonly used approach for student modeling, and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) is a versatile model that can be applied to a wide range of tasks, such as language translation. In this work, we directly compared three models: BKT, its variant Intervention-BKT (IBKT), and LSTM, on two types of student modeling tasks: post-test scores prediction and learning gains prediction. Additionally, while previous work on student learning has often used skill/knowledge components identified by domain experts, we incorporated an automatic skill discovery method (SK), which includes a nonparametric prior over the exercise-skill assignments, to all three models. Thus, we explored a total of six models: BKT, BKT+SK, IBKT, IBKT+SK, LSTM, and LSTM+SK. Two training datasets were employed, one was collected from a natural language physics intelligent tutoring system named Cordillera, and the other was from a standard probability intelligent tutoring system named Pyrenees. Overall, our results showed that BKT and BKT+SK outperformed the others on predicting post-test scores, whereas LSTM and LSTM+SK achieved the highest accuracy, F1-measure, and area under the ROC curve (AUC) on predicting learning gains. Furthermore, we demonstrated that by combining SK with the BKT model, BKT+SK could reliably predict post-test scores using only the earliest 50% of the entire training sequences. For learning gain early prediction, using the earliest 70% of the entire sequences, LSTM can deliver a comparable prediction as using the entire training sequences. The findings yield a learning environment that can foretell students’ performance and learning gains early, and can render adaptive pedagogical strategy accordingly. 

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3. Knowledge Tracing for Complex Problem Solving: Granular Rank-Based Tensor Factorization

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3450613.3456831  

   Wang, Chunpai ; Sahebi, Shaghayegh ; Zhao, Siqian ; Brusilovsky, Peter ; Moraes, Laura O. ( June 2021 , Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization)

   null (Ed.)

   Knowledge Tracing (KT), which aims to model student knowledge level and predict their performance, is one of the most important applications of user modeling. Modern KT approaches model and maintain an up-to-date state of student knowledge over a set of course concepts according to students’ historical performance in attempting the problems. However, KT approaches were designed to model knowledge by observing relatively small problem-solving steps in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. While these approaches were applied successfully to model student knowledge by observing student solutions for simple problems, such as multiple-choice questions, they do not perform well for modeling complex problem solving in students. Most importantly, current models assume that all problem attempts are equally valuable in quantifying current student knowledge. However, for complex problems that involve many concepts at the same time, this assumption is deficient. It results in inaccurate knowledge states and unnecessary fluctuations in estimated student knowledge, especially if students guess the correct answer to a problem that they have not mastered all of its concepts or slip in answering the problem that they have already mastered all of its concepts. In this paper, we argue that not all attempts are equivalently important in discovering students’ knowledge state, and some attempts can be summarized together to better represent student performance. We propose a novel student knowledge tracing approach, Granular RAnk based TEnsor factorization (GRATE), that dynamically selects student attempts that can be aggregated while predicting students’ performance in problems and discovering the concepts presented in them. Our experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the improved performance of GRATE, compared to the state-of-the-art baselines, in the task of student performance prediction. Our further analysis shows that attempt aggregation eliminates the unnecessary fluctuations from students’ discovered knowledge states and helps in discovering complex latent concepts in the problems. 

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4. Eliciting Proactive and Reactive Control During Use of an Interactive Learning Environment

   Unal, D. S. ; Arrington, C. M. ; Solovey, E. ; Walker, E. ( January 2023 , Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2023))

   Mendez, G. ; Matsuda, N. ; Santos, O. C. ; Dimitrova, V. (Ed.)

   The dual mechanisms of control framework describes two modes of goal-directed behavior: proactive control (goal maintenance) and reactive control (goal activation on task demands). Although these mechanisms are relevant to learner behaviors during interaction with intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), their relation to ITSs is under-researched. We propose a manipulation to induce proactive or reactive control during interaction with an online tutoring system. We present two experiments where students solved problems using either proactive or reactive control. Study 1 validates the manipulation by investigating behavioral measures that reflect usage of the intended strategy and assesses whether either mode impacted learning. Study 2 investigates if alternating between control modes during problem solving affects student performance. 

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5. Sensor-Free Predictive Models of Affect in an Online Learning Environment

   Harrison, A ( January 2018 , Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Educational Data Mining)

   A significant amount of research has illustrated the impact of student emotional and affective state on learning outcomes. Just as human teachers and tutors often adapt instruction to accommodate changes in student affect, the ability for computer-based systems to similarly become affect-aware, detecting and personalizing instruction in response to student affective state, could significantly improve student learning. Personalized and affective interventions in tutoring systems can be realized through affect-aware learning technologies to deter students from practicing poor learning behaviors in response to negative affective states and to optimize the amount of learning that occurs over time. In this paper, we build off previous work in affect detection within intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) by applying two methodologies to develop sensor-free models of student affect with only data recorded from middle-school students interacting with an ITS. We develop models of four affective states to evaluate and determine significant predictors of affect. Namely, we develop a model which discerns students’ reported interest significantly better than majority class. 

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