ERIC Number: ED592679
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Going Deeper with Deep Knowledge Tracing
Xiong, Xiaolu; Zhao, Siyuan; Van Inwegen, Eric G.; Beck, Joseph E.
International Educational Data Mining Society, Paper presented at the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM) (9th, Raleigh, NC, Jun 29-Jul 2, 2016)
Over the last couple of decades, there have been a large variety of approaches towards modeling student knowledge within intelligent tutoring systems. With the booming development of deep learning and large-scale artificial neural networks, there have been empirical successes in a number of machine learning and data mining applications, including student knowledge modeling. Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT), a pioneer algorithm that utilizes recurrent neural networks to model student learning, reports substantial improvements in prediction performance. To help the EDM community better understand the promising techniques of deep learning, we examine DKT alongside two well-studied models for knowledge modeling, PFA and BKT. In addition to sharing a primer on the internal computational structures of DKT, we also report on potential issues that arise from data formatting. We take steps to reproduce the experiments of Deep Knowledge Tracing by implementing a DKT algorithm using Google's TensorFlow framework; we also reproduce similar results on new datasets. We determine that the DKT findings do not hold an overall edge when compared to the PFA model, when applied to properly prepared datasets that are limited to main (i.e. non-scaffolding) questions. More importantly, during the investigation of DKT, we not only discovered a data quality issue in a public available data set, but we also detected a vulnerability of DKT at how it handles multiple skill sequences. [Additional funding for this paper was provided by the U.S. Department of Education's Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN). For the full proceedings, see ED592609.]
Descriptors: Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Computer Software, Bayesian Statistics, Knowledge Level, Difficulty Level, Mastery Learning, Scaffolding (Teaching Technique), Sequential Approach, Learning Processes, Data Analysis, Performance Based Assessment, Student Evaluation, Prediction, Comparative Analysis
International Educational Data Mining Society. e-mail: admin@educationaldatamining.org; Web site: http://www.educationaldatamining.org
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF); Institute of Education Sciences (ED); Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Authoring Institution: N/A
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: ACI1440753; DRL1252297; DRL1109483; DRL1316736; DGE1535428; DRL1031398; R305A120125; R305C100024