On the Opportunities and Challenges of Offline Reinforcement Learning for Recommender Systems

Reinforcement learning serves as a potent tool for modeling dynamic user interests within recommender systems, garnering increasing research attention of late. However, a significant drawback persists: its poor data efficiency, stemming from its interactive nature. The training of reinforcement learning-based recommender systems demands expensive online interactions to amass adequate trajectories, essential for agents to learn user preferences. This inefficiency renders reinforcement learning-based recommender systems a formidable undertaking, necessitating the exploration of potential solutions. Recent strides in offline reinforcement learning present a new perspective. Offline reinforcement learning empowers agents to glean insights from offline datasets and deploy learned policies in online settings. Given that recommender systems possess extensive offline datasets, the framework of offline reinforcement learning aligns seamlessly. Despite being a burgeoning field, works centered on recommender systems utilizing offline reinforcement learning remain limited. This survey aims to introduce and delve into offline reinforcement learning within recommender systems, offering an inclusive review of existing literature in this domain. Furthermore, we strive to underscore prevalent challenges, opportunities, and future pathways, poised to propel research in this evolving field.Comment: under revie

School Leaders Decision-Making Process for Academic Program Placement: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomenon of the decision making process among secondary school leaders as they engage in an academic file review in order to make decisions regarding academic placement of a newly enrolled student. During a semi-structured interview, secondary school principals were asked to engage in a document analysis using an authentic student profile and describe how they would determine the most appropriate academic program placement for the student. Authentic insights from the perspectives of secondary school principals defined experiences and factors that influence decision making processes. Through a semi-structured, open-ended interview with secondary school principals and a document analysis of a student comprehensive file, the researcher analyzed the responses and described the experiences of secondary school principals engaged in the academic planning process for a student. Findings and recommendations for practice are included

Equality of Learning Opportunity via Individual Fairness in Personalized Recommendations

Online education platforms play an increasingly important role in mediating the success of individuals’ careers. Therefore, while building overlying content recommendation services, it becomes essential to guarantee that learners are provided with equal recommended learning opportunities, according to the platform principles, context, and pedagogy. Though the importance of ensuring equality of learning opportunities has been well investigated in traditional institutions, how this equality can be operationalized in online learning ecosystems through recommender systems is still under-explored. In this paper, we shape a blueprint of the decisions and processes to be considered in the context of equality of recommended learning opportunities, based on principles that need to be empirically-validated (no evaluation with live learners has been performed). To this end, we first provide a formalization of educational principles that model recommendations’ learning properties, and a novel fairness metric that combines them to monitor the equality of recommended learning opportunities among learners. Then, we envision a scenario wherein an educational platform should be arranged in such a way that the generated recommendations meet each principle to a certain degree for all learners, constrained to their individual preferences. Under this view, we explore the learning opportunities provided by recommender systems in a course platform, uncovering systematic inequalities. To reduce this effect, we propose a novel post-processing approach that balances personalization and equality of recommended opportunities. Experiments show that our approach leads to higher equality, with a negligible loss in personalization. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for future studies of learners’ preferences and limits concerning the equality of recommended learning opportunities

An Analysis of Principal Preparation Programs at Pennsylvania State Schools

In this era of data-driven accountability for school success and high student achievement, successful school leadership has been hailed as one of the most import tools in creating effective schools. Principal preparation programs have an ever-demanding job of producing high-quality principals capable of effective school leadership, as the failure or success of a school can be directly attributed to the training and preparation of the school principal. It is the desire of the researcher that the findings of this study will add to the research on school leadership and perhaps encourage university principal preparation programs to examine their practices and engage in ongoing communication with the school districts in which they serve. The purpose of this study was to examine principal preparation programs within the Pennsylvanian State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and to ascertain whether their programs were structured in a way that would equip principal candidates with the leadership roles deemed essential for 21st century school leadership. The four leadership roles uncovered in this research as essential for 21st century school leadership success are: (1) instructional leadership, (2) ethical leadership, (3) distributed leadership, and (4) visionary leadership. The sample size for this qualitative case study consisted of nine schools (N=9), and data for this study were collected by means of available online program documentation. Examining principal preparation through the lens of General Systems Theory and Systems thinking, the researcher analyzed the program structure and overall program design for each principal preparation program within the PASSHE system of schools. Study results revealed two important findings of note: (1) principal preparation programs within the PASSHE system of schools overwhelmingly structured their programs around the ideals of instructional leadership, with the other three leadership roles only sparsely covered in program content and (2) although PASSHE is purported to be a collective system of schools, none of the schools in the study adopted a set of common principles or operated their principal preparation program in the same way. Each school operated as a separate entity, with varying requirements and program objectives

Placing Students in Eighth Grade Mathematics: A Case Study of the Decision-Making Process

Algebra 1 is considered an essential course to master in order to understand the concepts of higher-order mathematics, and the California accountability system designates this course for completion in 8th grade. In Shelton County, however, placement of 8th graders in this course is based on feeder school, rather than student ability, resulting in inequitable access. The purpose of this case study was to examine the experiences of administrators who place individual students in mathematics courses and the factors that influence their placement decisions. The conceptual framework for the study was administrative theory as related to processes of effective decision making. Eighteen administrators from 9 local districts described their experiences as they made decisions to place 8th grade students in Algebra 1. Seventeen administrators completed a semi-structured questionnaire on the placement decision-making process, 9 participated in follow-up semi-structured interviews, and 1 was interviewed only. Data were transcribed, open coded, and thematically analyzed. They key findings that affected placement decisions included that many students entered middle school unprepared for algebra, the local mathematics programs were not coherently designed, and aspects of an effective action-cycle decision-making process were absent. A position paper was developed that offers policy and practice recommendations that address these findings. Key recommendations include implementing clear policy, pursuing a coherent instructional program, providing student support interventions, and utilizing assessment and placement processes. This project study advances positive social change by engaging educational leaders at the local site to develop their professional practice and enhance the quality of their organizations\u27 mathematics education program

Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Observation, Coaching, And Feedback Cycle

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to investigate teachers’ perceptions, attitudes, and viewpoints of how their daily teaching may be refined after implementing feedback from the Observation Coaching Feedback Cycle (OCFC) into their daily instruction. In direct connection, this study’s purpose seeks to fill a gap in literature regarding teachers’ perceptions of the OCFC experience. Reflective Practice Theory was selected as the Conceptual Framework that guided this study. Reflective practice is essential to understand one’s actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning. Without reflective processes, people would not amend their work (Helyer, 2015). The whole premise of the evaluation process and is to encourage change and is based upon the idea that teachers would like to learn more and change their practice to best serve their students. Data were composed of survey evaluations and in-depth teacher interviews, which were analyzed for content relevant to the research questions. Through this case study, five primary themes of evaluators demonstrated the following: knowledge of content they are observing, relationships impacting the OCFC, professional growth, frequency of observation, perceptions of OCFC emerged with 5 emergent subthemes. Findings may be useful for district administrators, K-12 school systems, classroom teachers, and special area teachers such as teachers of Art, Music, Health and Physical Education and Career Technical Subjects

Exploratory Case Study of Online Teacher Professional Development at a Faith Based School Through the Lens of a Community of Inquiry Framework

As online education continues to expand, a need has arisen for online teacher professional developments (OTPDs) that are tailored to fit the individualized needs of teachers. This qualitative, exploratory case study explored one faith-based, virtual school’s OTPD program within a community of inquiry framework. This study used purposive sampling to describe six teacher participants’ perceptions of the design and implementation of their OTPD as well as the pedagogical changes resulting from effective OTPD. Data were collected using two focus group discussions, a community of inquiry survey, and end-of-the-year teacher self-evaluations. Data analysis revealed three themes to answer the three research questions posed by this study. Study findings indicated that (a) teachers found OTPD effective when it was relevant to their individual needs, (b) intentional OTPD led to pedagogical changes within the classroom, and (c) teachers felt a sense of community when all three presences were integrated into effective OTPD. Consequently, school administrators and professional development designers need to avoid designing and implementing OTPD that is a “one size fits all” OTPD. Instead, OTPD planners need to individualize OTPDs that are relevant and intentional, while incorporating all three elements of the community of inquiry framework resulting in effective OTPD