Leveraging Crowdsourcing Data For Deep Active Learning - An Application: Learning Intents in Alexa

This paper presents a generic Bayesian framework that enables any deep learning model to actively learn from targeted crowds. Our framework inherits from recent advances in Bayesian deep learning, and extends existing work by considering the targeted crowdsourcing approach, where multiple annotators with unknown expertise contribute an uncontrolled amount (often limited) of annotations. Our framework leverages the low-rank structure in annotations to learn individual annotator expertise, which then helps to infer the true labels from noisy and sparse annotations. It provides a unified Bayesian model to simultaneously infer the true labels and train the deep learning model in order to reach an optimal learning efficacy. Finally, our framework exploits the uncertainty of the deep learning model during prediction as well as the annotators' estimated expertise to minimize the number of required annotations and annotators for optimally training the deep learning model. We evaluate the effectiveness of our framework for intent classification in Alexa (Amazon's personal assistant), using both synthetic and real-world datasets. Experiments show that our framework can accurately learn annotator expertise, infer true labels, and effectively reduce the amount of annotations in model training as compared to state-of-the-art approaches. We further discuss the potential of our proposed framework in bridging machine learning and crowdsourcing towards improved human-in-the-loop systems

Jesus Teaching Through Discovery

What made Jesus’ teaching effective? Jesus’ teaching was effective because it resulted in changing the hearers’ heart and having the hearer apply his message to their lives. Jesus’ teaching amazed listeners, for example, after hearing the Sermon on the Mount the crowds were amazed (Matthew 7:28). He taught ordinary, unschooled, disciples for three years and their teaching changed the entire world of their time and continues to affect our world today. The hearers of his teaching opened their “eyes and ears”. What made his teaching so successful? His teaching consisted of a set of procedures. Jesus identified the teaching moments; facilitated inquiry by giving inspiring questions, enabled audiences to formulate hypothesizes through insights, and encouraged his audiences to apply their learning to practical situations. Jesus knew that learning was not simply memorizing facts or reciting the Law of Moses. Learning involved organizing new facts to existing schema and applying that new information. His teaching is typically a discovery learning process. The following article will review Jesus’ teaching method through the modern lens of discovery learning

Making Disciples: The Effects of Technology Integration Coaching

This paper describes a pilot study of collegial coaching for technology integration at two private Christian schools. Two students nearing completion of a Master’s in Education in Curriculum and Instruction with a Specialization in Instructional Technology each coached three fellow teachers, self-described as digital immigrants, to integrate technology into their teaching. The coaches spent an average of 15 hours per teacher brainstorming, teaching, and facilitating technology integration. Information obtained from a variety of data sources (interviews, a post-coaching questionnaire, a focus group, and analyses of journals kept by both coaches and coached teachers) revealed the positive effects of their collegial coaching and suggested ideas for optimizing coaching for technology integration

An Economic Theory of Academic Engagement Norms: The Struggle for Popularity and Normative Hegemony in Secondary Schools

[Excerpt] Why and how do groups create norms? Kenneth Arrow proposed that “norms of social behavior, including ethical and moral codes, ….are reactions of society to compensate for market failure”. This internalize the real externalities explanation for norms is also standard among rational choice theorists in sociology. The situation becomes more complex when we recognize some actions create positive externalities for some individuals and negative externalities for others. Often this results in no norm being established. However, sometimes one segment of a social system has normative hegemony and enforces norms that enhance their power and prestige at the expense of other groups. Norms regarding caste in India, for example, were functional for Brahmins but humiliating for Harijans. Caste and status norms of this type will also be referred to as “Honor us; Not them” norms. Such norms arise when one group is much more powerful (has greater ability to enforce their preferred social norm) than other groups and it imposes its will on others. An additional requirement is that the people who oppose the norm established by the dominant group must be unable or unwilling to leave the social system in which the norm operates

Chapter II-1- William E. Griffis grows up

In which William E. Griffis is born in Philadelphia, grows to young manhood, becomes a twice-born Christian, serves briefly in the Civil War, attends Rutgers College, plays football, travels to Europe, begins theological seminary, gets engaged and, when the engagement is broken, jumps at the opportunity of becoming (for a handsome salary) a chemistry teacher (and crypto-missionary) in feudal Japan

The effect of multiple knowledge sources on learning and teaching

Current paradigms for machine-based learning and teaching tend to perform their task in isolation from a rich context of existing knowledge. In contrast, the research project presented here takes the view that bringing multiple sources of knowledge to bear is of central importance to learning in complex domains. As a consequence teaching must both take advantage of and beware of interactions between new and existing knowledge. The central process which connects learning to its context is reasoning by analogy, a primary concern of this research. In teaching, the connection is provided by the explicit use of a learning model to reason about the choice of teaching actions. In this learning paradigm, new concepts are incrementally refined and integrated into a body of expertise, rather than being evaluated against a static notion of correctness. The domain chosen for this experimentation is that of learning to solve "algebra story problems." A model of acquiring problem solving skills in this domain is described, including: representational structures for background knowledge, a problem solving architecture, learning mechanisms, and the role of analogies in applying existing problem solving abilities to novel problems. Examples of learning are given for representative instances of algebra story problems. After relating our views to the psychological literature, we outline the design of a teaching system. Finally, we insist on the interdependence of learning and teaching and on the synergistic effects of conducting both research efforts in parallel

T. S. Eliot and Transpacific modernism

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in American Literary History following peer review. The version of record: "Patterson, Anita. "T. S. Eliot and Transpacific Modernism." American Literary History, vol. 27 no. 4, 2015, pp. 665-682." is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajv042.Japonisme is a term often used to describe the shaping effects of Japanese culture and aesthetics on European art, but by the 1880s a similar trend emerged in the US, influencing popular culture as well as fine arts and poetry. This essay examines how Japonisme figured T. S. Eliot's development as a poet, focusing on Boston as a world city that was rapidly becoming global. It shows how Kakuzo Okakura, an art historian and curator of Asian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts during the time when Eliot was a Harvard undergraduate, and Masaharu Anesaki, a pioneer in the study of comparative religion who lectured on Mahayana Buddhism there when Eliot was a graduate student, inspired transpacific intercultural dialogue that would last the poet a lifetime. Eliot's formative encounter with Okakura and Anesaki raised his awareness of his family history in a region with longstanding ties to Asia; it nurtured his ambivalent engagement with such Boston-area writers as Emerson, whose prior interest in Confucianism laid a foundation for Eliot's modernism; and the encounter taught Eliot valuable lessons about moral action and impersonality, culminating in poems such as Four Quartets