A novel algorithm for dynamic student profile adaptation based on learning styles

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.E-learning recommendation systems are used to enhance student performance and knowledge by providing tailor- made services based on the students’ preferences and learning styles, which are typically stored in student profiles. For such systems to remain effective, the profiles need to be able to adapt and reflect the students’ changing behaviour. In this paper, we introduce new algorithms that are designed to track student learning behaviour patterns, capture their learning styles, and maintain dynamic student profiles within a recommendation system (RS). This paper also proposes a new method to extract features that characterise student behaviour to identify students’ learning styles with respect to the Felder-Silverman learning style model (FSLSM). In order to test the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, we present a series of experiments that use a dataset of real students to demonstrate how our proposed algorithm can effectively model a dynamic student profile and adapt to different student learning behaviour. The results revealed that the students could effectively increase their learning efficiency and quality for the courses when the learning styles are identified, and proper recommendations are made by using our method

Segmenting broadcast news streams using lexical chains

In this paper we propose a course-grained NLP approach to text segmentation based on the analysis of lexical cohesion within text. Most work in this area has focused on the discovery of textual units that discuss subtopic structure within documents. In contrast our segmentation task requires the discovery of topical units of text i.e. distinct news stories from broadcast news programmes. Our system SeLeCT first builds a set of lexical chains, in order to model the discourse structure of the text. A boundary detector is then used to search for breaking points in this structure indicated by patterns of cohesive strength and weakness within the text. We evaluate this technique on a test set of concatenated CNN news story transcripts and compare it with an established statistical approach to segmentation called TextTiling

Comparaison des documents audiovisuels<br />par Matrice de Similarité

The work of this thesis relates to the comparison of video documents. The field of digital video is in full expansion. Videos are now present in large quantity even for personal use. The video comparison is a basic analysis operation in complement of classification, extraction and structuring of videos.Traditional approaches of comparison are primarily based on the low-level features of the videos to be compared, considered as multidimensional vectors. Other approaches are based on the similarity of frames without taking into account neither the temporal composition of the video nor the audiolayer. The main disadvantage of these methods is that they reduce the comparison role to a simple operator robust to noise effects. Such operators are generally used in order to identify the various specimens of a same document.The originality of our approach lies in the introduction of the of style similarity notion, taking as a starting point the human criteria into the comparison. These criteria are more flexible, and do not impose a strict similarity of all the studied features at the same time.We define an algorithm of extraction of the similarities between the series of values produced bythe analysis of the audiovisual low-level features. The algorithm is inspired by the dynamic programmingand the time series comparison methods.We propose a representation of the data resulting from these processings in the form of a matrixpattern suitable for the visual and immediate comparison of two videos. This matrix is then used topropose a generic similarity measure. The measure is applicable independently to videos of comparableor heterogeneous contents.We developed several applications to demonstrate the behavior of the comparison method and thesimilarity measure. The experiments concern primarily: - the identification of the structure in acollection/sub-collection of documents, - the description of stylistics elements in a movie, and - theanalysis of the grid of programs from a TV stream.Les travaux de cette thèse concernent la comparaison des documents vidéo. Dans le domaine en pleine expansion de la vidéo numérique, les documents disponibles sont maintenant présents en quantité importante même dans les foyers. Opération de base de tout type d'analyse de contenus, en complément de la classification, de l'extraction et de la structuration, la comparaison dans le domaine de l'audiovisuel est d'une utilité qui n'est pas à démontrer.Des approches classiques de comparaison se basent essentiellement sur l'ensemble des caractéristiquesbas niveaux des documents à comparer, en les considérant comme des vecteurs multidimensionnels. D'autres approches se basent sur la similarité des images composant la vidéo sans tenir compte de la composition temporelle du document ni de la bandeson. Le défaut que l'on peut reprocher à ces méthodes est qu'elles restreignent la comparaison à un simple opérateur binaire robuste au bruit. De tels opérateurs sont généralement utilisés afin d'identifier les différents exemplaires d'un même document. L'originalité de notre démarche réside dans le fait que nous introduisons la notion de la similarité de styleen s'inspirant des critères humains dans la comparaison des documents vidéo. Ces critèressont plus souples, et n'imposent pas une similarité stricte de toutes les caractéristiques étudiéesà la fois.En nous inspirant de la programmation dynamique et de la comparaison des séries chronologiques, nous définissons un algorithme d'extraction des similarités entre les séries de valeurs produites par l'analyse de caractéristiques audiovisuelles de bas-niveau. Ensuite, un second traitement générique approxime le résultat de l'algorithme de la longueur de la PlusLongue Sous-Séquence Commune (PLSC) plus rapidement que ce dernier. Nous proposons une représentation des données issues de ces traitements sous la forme d'un schéma matriciel propre à la comparaison visuelle et immédiate de deux contenus. Cette matrice peut être également utilisée pour définir une mesure de similarité générique, applicable à des documents de même genre ou de genres hétérogènes.Plusieurs applications ont été mises en place pour démontrer le comportement de la méthode de comparaison et de la mesure de similarité, ainsi que leur pertinence. Les expérimentations concernent essentiellement : - l'identification d'une structure organisationnelle en collection / sous-collection d'une base de documents, - la mise en évidence d'élémentsstylistiques dans un film de cinéma, - la mise en évidence de la grille de programmes d'unflux de télévision

On Recommendation of Learning Objects using Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The e-learning recommender system in learning institutions is increasingly becoming the preferred mode of delivery, as it enables learning anytime, anywhere. However, delivering personalised course learning objects based on learner preferences is still a challenge. Current mainstream recommendation algorithms, such as the Collaborative Filtering (CF) and Content-Based Filtering (CBF), deal with only two types of entities, namely users and items with their ratings. However, these methods do not pay attention to student preferences, such as learning styles, which are especially important for the accuracy of course learning objects prediction or recommendation. Moreover, several recommendation techniques experience cold-start and rating sparsity problems. To address the challenge of improving the quality of recommender systems, in this paper a novel recommender algorithm for machine learning is proposed, which combines students actual rating with their learning styles to recommend Top-N course learning objects (LOs). Various recommendation techniques are considered in an experimental study investigating the best technique to use in predicting student ratings for e-learning recommender systems. We use the Felder-Silverman Learning Styles Model (FSLSM) to represent both the student learning styles and the learning object profiles. The predicted rating has been compared with the actual student rating. This approach has been experimented on 80 students for an online course created in the MOODLE Learning Management System, while the evaluation of the experiments has been performed with the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The results of the experiment verify that the proposed approach provides a higher prediction rating and significantly increases the accuracy of the recommendation

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research