Machine Learning of User Profiles: Representational Issues

As more information becomes available electronically, tools for finding information of interest to users becomes increasingly important. The goal of the research described here is to build a system for generating comprehensible user profiles that accurately capture user interest with minimum user interaction. The research described here focuses on the importance of a suitable generalization hierarchy and representation for learning profiles which are predictively accurate and comprehensible. In our experiments we evaluated both traditional features based on weighted term vectors as well as subject features corresponding to categories which could be drawn from a thesaurus. Our experiments, conducted in the context of a content-based profiling system for on-line newspapers on the World Wide Web (the IDD News Browser), demonstrate the importance of a generalization hierarchy and the promise of combining natural language processing techniques with machine learning (ML) to address an information retrieval (IR) problem.Comment: 6 page

Comprehensible Input and Proficiency-Based Grading: A Curriculum Designed for Novice-Mid French Students

Narum, Ingrid. (2020). Comprehensible input and proficiency-based grading: a curriculum designed for novice-mid French students. The research question addressed in this capstone project is, “How do comprehensible input and proficiency-based grading affect language learning in the classroom?” Theories and strategies related to comprehensible input and proficiency-based grading in the foreign language classroom, focusing on instruction and assessment was researched. Best practices were identified and established that move away from traditional methods in the language classroom. The outcome of this research is a unit plan designed for novice-mid French students. The unit plan includes daily lessons that utilize comprehensible input strategies, student self-reflection and proficiency assessments based in real-world contexts

Comprehensible Input and Proficiency-Based Grading: A Curriculum Designed for Novice-Mid French Students

The research question addressed in this capstone project is, “How do comprehensible input and proficiency-based grading affect language learning in the classroom?” Theories and strategies related to comprehensible input and proficiency-based grading in the foreign language classroom, focusing on instruction and assessment was researched. Best practices were identified and established that move away from traditional methods in the language classroom. The outcome of this research is a unit plan designed for novice-mid French students. The unit plan includes daily lessons that utilize comprehensible input strategies, student self-reflection and proficiency assessments based in real-world contexts

Implementing Comprehensible Input in the World Language Classroom

Using Comprehensible Input (CI) strategies to accomplish Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as defined by Krashen (1982) is gaining traction throughout World Language classrooms. By providing input to students that is comprehensible, yet slightly challenging, they can be introduced to new grammar and linguistic concepts that will enhance the acquisition process. However, teachers must use a variety of CI strategies in the classroom in order to be most successful. The CI strategies must also be tailored to the level that is taught; CI strategies should look different in a classroom of students at the novice level than they do in a classroom of students at the intermediate levels. The researcher conducted a survey in the World Language Department of Spencerport Central School District in Spencerport, New York in order to discover how CI strategies are being used in the classroom and how much knowledge the teachers have about Second Language Acquisition. The surveys revealed that teachers need more training in the research surrounding SLA and CI. In order to train World Language teachers on the key components of Second Language Acquisition and using CI to accomplish it, the researcher has put together a manual and Professional Development component that guides teachers through the process of selecting input that is comprehensible and using strategies in the World Language classroom regardless of the level that is taught

Discovering Implicational Knowledge in Wikidata

Knowledge graphs have recently become the state-of-the-art tool for representing the diverse and complex knowledge of the world. Examples include the proprietary knowledge graphs of companies such as Google, Facebook, IBM, or Microsoft, but also freely available ones such as YAGO, DBpedia, and Wikidata. A distinguishing feature of Wikidata is that the knowledge is collaboratively edited and curated. While this greatly enhances the scope of Wikidata, it also makes it impossible for a single individual to grasp complex connections between properties or understand the global impact of edits in the graph. We apply Formal Concept Analysis to efficiently identify comprehensible implications that are implicitly present in the data. Although the complex structure of data modelling in Wikidata is not amenable to a direct approach, we overcome this limitation by extracting contextual representations of parts of Wikidata in a systematic fashion. We demonstrate the practical feasibility of our approach through several experiments and show that the results may lead to the discovery of interesting implicational knowledge. Besides providing a method for obtaining large real-world data sets for FCA, we sketch potential applications in offering semantic assistance for editing and curating Wikidata

Communication of ethical values in organic farming

Due to globalisation and growing anonymity of trade with organic products, farmers in Europe are under pressure to lower their production standards in order to keep up with world-wide competition. On the other hand consumers increasingly criticise food products which were produced under unsatisfactory social and environmental conditions. A literature review indicates that consumers are willing to pay an additional premium for ethical values in organic production regarding social, environmental and economic concerns. This creates possibilities to differentiate from the organic mass markets by providing and communicating ethical values. So far, not much is known about which ethical values and arguments are comprehensible and important to organic consumers and how to communicate them most effectively. This contribution discusses some hypotheses on the communication of additional ethical values in the organic market and points at existing research deficits

How to make a 'Colourful World'

Addressing topics as varied as food supply; sustainable farming practices; climate change; green energy; transport solutions; river restoration, and air quality, Colourful World is a children’s computer game that seeks to convey complex and interconnected ideas in a way that is both comprehensible and enjoyable for young learners

Software Verification and Graph Similarity for Automated Evaluation of Students' Assignments

In this paper we promote introducing software verification and control flow graph similarity measurement in automated evaluation of students' programs. We present a new grading framework that merges results obtained by combination of these two approaches with results obtained by automated testing, leading to improved quality and precision of automated grading. These two approaches are also useful in providing a comprehensible feedback that can help students to improve the quality of their programs We also present our corresponding tools that are publicly available and open source. The tools are based on LLVM low-level intermediate code representation, so they could be applied to a number of programming languages. Experimental evaluation of the proposed grading framework is performed on a corpus of university students' programs written in programming language C. Results of the experiments show that automatically generated grades are highly correlated with manually determined grades suggesting that the presented tools can find real-world applications in studying and grading