4,004 research outputs found
Beyond A/B Testing: Sequential Randomization for Developing Interventions in Scaled Digital Learning Environments
Randomized experiments ensure robust causal inference that are critical to
effective learning analytics research and practice. However, traditional
randomized experiments, like A/B tests, are limiting in large scale digital
learning environments. While traditional experiments can accurately compare two
treatment options, they are less able to inform how to adapt interventions to
continually meet learners' diverse needs. In this work, we introduce a trial
design for developing adaptive interventions in scaled digital learning
environments -- the sequential randomized trial (SRT). With the goal of
improving learner experience and developing interventions that benefit all
learners at all times, SRTs inform how to sequence, time, and personalize
interventions. In this paper, we provide an overview of SRTs, and we illustrate
the advantages they hold compared to traditional experiments. We describe a
novel SRT run in a large scale data science MOOC. The trial results
contextualize how learner engagement can be addressed through inclusive
culturally targeted reminder emails. We also provide practical advice for
researchers who aim to run their own SRTs to develop adaptive interventions in
scaled digital learning environments
A Methodology for Discovering how to Adaptively Personalize to Users using Experimental Comparisons
We explain and provide examples of a formalism that supports the methodology
of discovering how to adapt and personalize technology by combining randomized
experiments with variables associated with user models. We characterize a
formal relationship between the use of technology to conduct A/B experiments
and use of technology for adaptive personalization. The MOOClet Formalism [11]
captures the equivalence between experimentation and personalization in its
conceptualization of modular components of a technology. This motivates a
unified software design pattern that enables technology components that can be
compared in an experiment to also be adapted based on contextual data, or
personalized based on user characteristics. With the aid of a concrete use
case, we illustrate the potential of the MOOClet formalism for a methodology
that uses randomized experiments of alternative micro-designs to discover how
to adapt technology based on user characteristics, and then dynamically
implements these personalized improvements in real time
Designing Human-Centered Collective Intelligence
Human-Centered Collective Intelligence (HCCI) is an emergent research area that seeks to bring together major research areas like machine learning, statistical modeling, information retrieval, market research, and software engineering to address challenges pertaining to deriving intelligent insights and solutions through the collaboration of several intelligent sensors, devices and data sources. An archetypal contextual CI scenario might be concerned with deriving affect-driven intelligence through multimodal emotion detection sources in a bid to determine the likability of one movie trailer over another. On the other hand, the key tenets to designing robust and evolutionary software and infrastructure architecture models to address cross-cutting quality concerns is of keen interest in the “Cloud” age of today. Some of the key quality concerns of interest in CI scenarios span the gamut of security and privacy, scalability, performance, fault-tolerance, and reliability. I present recent advances in CI system design with a focus on highlighting optimal solutions for the aforementioned cross-cutting concerns. I also describe a number of design challenges and a framework that I have determined to be critical to designing CI systems. With inspiration from machine learning, computational advertising, ubiquitous computing, and sociable robotics, this literature incorporates theories and concepts from various viewpoints to empower the collective intelligence engine, ZOEI, to discover affective state and emotional intent across multiple mediums. The discerned affective state is used in recommender systems among others to support content personalization. I dive into the design of optimal architectures that allow humans and intelligent systems to work collectively to solve complex problems. I present an evaluation of various studies that leverage the ZOEI framework to design collective intelligence
Effect of Values and Technology Use on Exercise: Implications for Personalized Behavior Change Interventions
Technology has recently been recruited in the war against the ongoing obesity
crisis; however, the adoption of Health & Fitness applications for regular
exercise is a struggle. In this study, we present a unique demographically
representative dataset of 15k US residents that combines technology use logs
with surveys on moral views, human values, and emotional contagion. Combining
these data, we provide a holistic view of individuals to model their physical
exercise behavior. First, we show which values determine the adoption of Health
& Fitness mobile applications, finding that users who prioritize the value of
purity and de-emphasize values of conformity, hedonism, and security are more
likely to use such apps. Further, we achieve a weighted AUROC of .673 in
predicting whether individual exercises, and we also show that the application
usage data allows for substantially better classification performance (.608)
compared to using basic demographics (.513) or internet browsing data (.546).
We also find a strong link of exercise to respondent socioeconomic status, as
well as the value of happiness. Using these insights, we propose actionable
design guidelines for persuasive technologies targeting health behavior
modification
Reinforcement learning for personalized dialogue management
Language systems have been of great interest to the research community and
have recently reached the mass market through various assistant platforms on
the web. Reinforcement Learning methods that optimize dialogue policies have
seen successes in past years and have recently been extended into methods that
personalize the dialogue, e.g. take the personal context of users into account.
These works, however, are limited to personalization to a single user with whom
they require multiple interactions and do not generalize the usage of context
across users. This work introduces a problem where a generalized usage of
context is relevant and proposes two Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based
approaches to this problem. The first approach uses a single learner and
extends the traditional POMDP formulation of dialogue state with features that
describe the user context. The second approach segments users by context and
then employs a learner per context. We compare these approaches in a benchmark
of existing non-RL and RL-based methods in three established and one novel
application domain of financial product recommendation. We compare the
influence of context and training experiences on performance and find that
learning approaches generally outperform a handcrafted gold standard
A Personalized System for Conversational Recommendations
Searching for and making decisions about information is becoming increasingly
difficult as the amount of information and number of choices increases.
Recommendation systems help users find items of interest of a particular type,
such as movies or restaurants, but are still somewhat awkward to use. Our
solution is to take advantage of the complementary strengths of personalized
recommendation systems and dialogue systems, creating personalized aides. We
present a system -- the Adaptive Place Advisor -- that treats item selection as
an interactive, conversational process, with the program inquiring about item
attributes and the user responding. Individual, long-term user preferences are
unobtrusively obtained in the course of normal recommendation dialogues and
used to direct future conversations with the same user. We present a novel user
model that influences both item search and the questions asked during a
conversation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in significantly
reducing the time and number of interactions required to find a satisfactory
item, as compared to a control group of users interacting with a non-adaptive
version of the system
- …