An educational recommender system based on argumentation theory

You are free to use the manuscript version of your article for internal, educational or other purposes of your own institution, company or funding agency[EN] Recommender Systems aim to provide users with search results close to their needs, making predictions of their preferences. In virtual learning environments, Educational Recommender Systems deliver learning objects according to the student's characteristics, preferences and learning needs. A learning object is an educational content unit, which once found and retrieved may assist students in their learning process. In previous work, authors have designed and evaluated several recommendation techniques for delivering the most appropriate learning object for each specific student. Also, they have combined these techniques by using hybridization methods, improving the performance of isolated techniques. However, traditional hybridization methods fail when the learning objects delivered by each recommendation technique are very different from those selected by the other techniques (there is no agreement about the best learning object to recommend). In this paper, we present a new recommendation method based on argumentation theory that is able to combine content-based, collaborative and knowledge-based recommendation techniques, or to act as a new recommendation technique. This method provides the students with those objects for which the system is able to generate more arguments to justify their suitability. It has been implemented and tested in the Federation of Learning Objects Repositories of Colombia, getting promising results.This work was partially developed with the aid of the doctoral grant offered to Paula A. Rodriguez by 'Programa Nacional de Formacion de Investigadores - COLCIENCIAS', Colombia and partially funded by the COLCIENCIAS project 1119-569-34172 from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. It was also supported by the by the projects TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and TIN2014-55206-R of the Spanish government and by the grant program for the recruitment of doctors for the Spanish system of science and technology (PAID-10-14) of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.Rodríguez, P.; Heras, S.; Palanca Cámara, J.; Poveda, JM.; Duque, N.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2017). An educational recommender system based on argumentation theory. AI Communications. 30(1):19-36. https://doi.org/10.3233/AIC-170724S1936301Briguez, C. E., Budán, M. C. D., Deagustini, C. A. D., Maguitman, A. G., Capobianco, M., & Simari, G. R. (2014). Argument-based mixed recommenders and their application to movie suggestion. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(14), 6467-6482. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2014.03.046BRIGUEZ, C. E., CAPOBIANCO, M., & MAGUITMAN, A. G. (2013). A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR TRUST-BASED NEWS RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION USING DEFEASIBLE ARGUMENTATION. International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, 22(04), 1350021. doi:10.1142/s0218213013500218R. Burke, Hybrid recommender systems: Survey and experiments, User Modelingand User-Adapted Interaction (2002).Chesñevar, C., Maguitman, A. G., & González, M. P. (2009). Empowering Recommendation Technologies Through Argumentation. Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence, 403-422. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-98197-0_20Drachsler, H., Verbert, K., Santos, O. C., & Manouselis, N. (2015). Panorama of Recommender Systems to Support Learning. Recommender Systems Handbook, 421-451. doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-7637-6_12N.D. Duque, D.A. Ovalle and J. Moreno, Objetos de aprendizaje, repositorios y federaciones... conocimiento para todos. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2015.Dwivedi, P., & Bharadwaj, K. K. (2013). e-Learning recommender system for a group of learners based on the unified learner profile approach. Expert Systems, 32(2), 264-276. doi:10.1111/exsy.12061GARCÍA, A. J., & SIMARI, G. R. (2004). Defeasible logic programming: an argumentative approach. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 4(1+2), 95-138. doi:10.1017/s1471068403001674Gunawardana, A., & Shani, G. (2015). Evaluating Recommender Systems. Recommender Systems Handbook, 265-308. doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-7637-6_8Heras, S., Botti, V., & Julián, V. (2012). Argument-based agreements in agent societies. Neurocomputing, 75(1), 156-162. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2011.02.022Heras, S., Rebollo, M., & Julián, V. (s. f.). A Dialogue Game Protocol for Recommendation in Social Networks. Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems, 515-522. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-87656-4_64P.A. Kirschner, S.J. Buckingham-Shum and C.S. Carr, Visualizing Argumentation: Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making, Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.Klašnja-Milićević, A., Ivanović, M., & Nanopoulos, A. (2015). Recommender systems in e-learning environments: a survey of the state-of-the-art and possible extensions. Artificial Intelligence Review, 44(4), 571-604. doi:10.1007/s10462-015-9440-zLearning Technology Standards Committee, IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, 2002.Leite, W. L., Svinicki, M., & Shi, Y. (2009). Attempted Validation of the Scores of the VARK: Learning Styles Inventory With Multitrait–Multimethod Confirmatory Factor Analysis Models. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 70(2), 323-339. doi:10.1177/0013164409344507Li, H., Oren, N., & Norman, T. J. (2012). Probabilistic Argumentation Frameworks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1-16. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-29184-5_1CACM Staff. (2009). Recommendation algorithms, online privacy, and more. Communications of the ACM, 52(5), 10-11. doi:10.1145/1506409.1506434Ossowski, S., Sierra, C., & Botti, V. (2012). Agreement Technologies: A Computing Perspective. Agreement Technologies, 3-16. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5583-3_1Palanca, J., Heras, S., Jorge, J., & Julian, V. (2015). Towards persuasive social recommendation. ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review, 15(2), 41-49. doi:10.1145/2815169.2815173Recio-García, J. A., Quijano, L., & Díaz-Agudo, B. (2013). Including social factors in an argumentative model for Group Decision Support Systems. Decision Support Systems, 56, 48-55. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2013.05.007Rodríguez, P., Duque, N., & Ovalle, D. A. (2015). Multi-agent System for Knowledge-Based Recommendation of Learning Objects Using Metadata Clustering. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 356-364. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19033-4_31Rodríguez, P. A., Ovalle, D. A., & Duque, N. D. (2015). A Student-Centered Hybrid Recommender System to Provide Relevant Learning Objects from Repositories. Learning and Collaboration Technologies, 291-300. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20609-7_28M. Salehi, M. Pourzaferani and S.A. Razavi, Hybrid attribute-based recommender system for learning material using genetic algorithm and a multidimensional information model, Egyptian Informatics Journal (2013).Sikka, R., Dhankhar, A., & Rana, C. (2012). A Survey Paper on E-Learning Recommender System. International Journal of Computer Applications, 47(9), 27-30. doi:10.5120/7218-0024Sinha, R., & Swearingen, K. (2002). The role of transparency in recommender systems. CHI ’02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’02. doi:10.1145/506443.506619Van de Sompel, H., Chute, R., & Hochstenbach, P. (2008). The aDORe federation architecture: digital repositories at scale. International Journal on Digital Libraries, 9(2), 83-100. doi:10.1007/s00799-008-0048-7Vekariya, V., & Kulkarni, G. R. (2012). Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles - Hybrid recommender systems: Survey and experiments. 2012 Second International Conference on Digital Information and Communication Technology and it’s Applications (DICTAP). doi:10.1109/dictap.2012.621540

Demo: Making Plans Scrutable with Argumentation and Natural Language Generation.

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Improving argumentation-based recommender systems through context-adaptable selection criteria

Recommender Systems based on argumentation represent an important proposal where the recommendation is supported by qualitative information. In these systems, the role of the comparison criterion used to decide between competing arguments is paramount and the possibility of using the most appropriate for a given domain becomes a central issue; therefore, an argumentative recommender system that offers an interchangeable argument comparison criterion provides a significant ability that can be exploited by the user. However, in most of current recommender systems, the argument comparison criterion is either fixed, or codified within the arguments. In this work we propose a formalization of context-adaptable selection criteria that enhances the argumentative reasoning mechanism. Thus, we do not propose of a new type of recommender system; instead we present a mechanism that expand the capabilities of existing argumentation-based recommender systems. More precisely, our proposal is to provide a way of specifying how to select and use the most appropriate argument comparison criterion effecting the selection on the user´s preferences, giving the possibility of programming, by the use of conditional expressions, which argument preference criterion has to be used in each particular situation.Fil: Teze, Juan Carlos Lionel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos; ArgentinaFil: Gottifredi, Sebastián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: García, Alejandro Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: Simari, Guillermo Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentin

Argument-based generation and explanation of recommendations

In the recommender systems literature, it has been shown that, in addition to improving system effectiveness, explaining recommendations may increase user satisfaction, trust, persuasion and loyalty. In general, explanations focus on the filtering algorithms or the users and items involved in the generation of recommendations. However, on certain domains that are rich on user-generated textual content, it would be valuable to provide justifications of recommendations according to arguments that are explicit, underlying or related with the data used by the systems, e.g., the reasons for customers' opinions in reviews of e-commerce sites, and the requests and claims in citizens' proposals and debates of e-participation platforms. In this context, there is a need and challenging task to automatically extract and exploit the arguments given for and against evaluated items. We thus advocate to focus not only on user preferences and item features, but also on associated arguments. In other words, we propose to not only consider what is said about items, but also why it is said. Hence, arguments would not only be part of the recommendation explanations, but could also be used by the recommendation algorithms themselves. To this end, in this thesis, we propose to use argument mining techniques and tools that allow retrieving and relating argumentative information from textual content, and investigate recommendation methods that exploit that information before, during and after their filtering processesThe author thanks his supervisor Iván Cantador for his valuable support and guidance in defining this thesis project. The work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00

ALBERT-Based Personalized Educational Recommender System: Enhancing Students’ Learning Outcomes in Online Learning

Online learners must navigate vast educational resources to find materials that meet their needs. This study introduces an ALBERT-based personalized educational recommender system to improve student learning. ALBERT (A Lite BERT), an optimized variant of the BERT algorithm, captures contextualized word representations and understands the semantic meaning of learning resources, student profiles, and interactions. This study evaluates the ALBERT-based recommender system’s personalized learning recommendations. To assess learning outcomes, a diverse group of students from different educational domains is evaluated. Before and after the recommender system, academic performance, knowledge retention, and engagement are assessed. User satisfaction surveys assess recommendation quality, relevance, and user experience. The recommender system uses ALBERT’s model optimization to improve recommendation accuracy, learner engagement, and personalized learning. The evaluation shows the ALBERT-based personalized recommender system improves online learning outcomes. System-generated recommendations boost student engagement, knowledge retention, and academic performance. User satisfaction surveys show that the ALBERT-based system meets learners’ needs by providing relevant and high-quality recommendations. This research shows how advanced deep learning algorithms like ALBERT can improve personalized online learning. ALBERT’s optimized training and inference speeds up the recommender system’s scalability. This empowers learners to access tailored and high-quality educational resources, maximizing their learning outcomes and potential in online learning

Approaches to the use of sensor data to improve classroom experience

quipping classrooms with inexpensive sensors can enable students and teachers with the opportunity to interact with the classroom in a smart way. In this paper an approach to acquiring contextual data from a classroom environment, using inexpensive sensors, is presented. We present our approach to formalising the usage data. Further we demonstrate how the data was used to model specific room usage situation as cases in a Case-based reasoning (CBR) system. The room usage data was than integrated in a room recommendations system, reasoning on the formalised usage data. We also detail on our on-going work to integrating the systems presented in this paper into our Smart University vision

Towards an argument-based music recommender system

The significance of recommender systems has steadily grown in recent years as they help users to access relevant items from the vast universe of possibilities available these days. However, most of the research in recommenders is based purely on quantitative aspects, i.e., measures of similarity between items or users. In this paper we introduce a novel hybrid approach to refine recommendations achieved by quantitative methods with a qualitative approach based on argumentation, where suggestions are given after considering several arguments in favor or against the recommendations. In order to accomplish this, we use Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP) as the underlying formalism for obtaining recommendations. This approach has a number of advantages over other existing recommendation techniques.In particular, recommendations can be refined at any time by adding new polished rules, and explanations may be provided supporting each  recommendation in a way that can be easily understood by the user, by means of the computed arguments.Fil: Briguez, Cristian Emanuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; ArgentinaFil: Budan, Maximiliano Celmo David. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; ArgentinaFil: Deagustini, Cristhian Ariel David. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; ArgentinaFil: Maguitman, Ana Gabriela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; ArgentinaFil: Capobianco, Marcela. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; ArgentinaFil: Simari, Guillermo Ricardo. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación. Laboratorio de Investigación y Desarrollo en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentin

Modeling a mobile group recommender system for tourism with intelligent agents and gamification

To provide recommendations to groups of people is a complex task, especially due to the group’s heterogeneity and conflicting preferences and personalities. This heterogeneity is even deeper in occasional groups formed for predefined tour packages in tourism. Group Recommender Systems (GRS) are being designed for helping in situations like those. However, many limitations can still be found, either on their time-consuming configurations and excessive intrusiveness to build the tourists’ profile, or in their lack of concern for the tourists’ interests during the planning and tours, like feeling a greater liberty, diminish the sense of fear/being lost, increase their sense of companionship, and promote the social interaction among them without losing a personalized experience. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model that intends to enhance GRS for tourism by using gamification techniques, intelligent agents modeled with the tourists’ context and profile, such as psychological and socio-cultural aspects, and dialogue games between the agents for the post-recommendation process. Some important aspects of a GRS for tourism are also discussed, opening the way for the proposed conceptual model, which we believe will help to solve the identified limitations.This work was supported by the GrouPlanner Project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-29178) and by National Funds through the FCT –Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2019 and UID/EEA/00760/2019