Machine learning involves developing algorithms that enable processors to learn without being programmed directly, with applications that range from predicting house prices to detecting email spam.
Feature engineering is the practice of selecting key features from raw data to provide to machine learning models in order to enhance model performance by decreasing algorithm complexity and thus improving model performance.
Difficulty Estimation
Difficulty estimation refers to the process of predicting the difficulty level of questions before they are used in tests using predictive models and text-based similarity measures. Predictive models utilize machine learning techniques such as Bayes Net to calculate probabilities that one answer is correct according to specific characteristics or context of questions and their solutions; the performance of such models is assessed through metrics like accuracy or response time.
One approach for estimating question difficulty is comparing it against past tests; however, this method is expensive, time-consuming, and subjective; hence, automatic methods for estimating difficulty are becoming increasingly popular.
Studies have explored ways to identify influential difficulty features and create prediction models capable of including them. Most such models attempt to estimate question difficulty by comparing it against similar questions graded by experts; however, these models often fail to account for critical considerations such as question type and language complexity.
Recent studies have also employed neural network-based methods for determining difficulty. Pre-trained on the task-specific corpus, these models can predict questions. Zhou and Tao (2021) utilized a multi-task BERT model to predict programming questions’ difficulty with greater than 67% accuracy compared to the two baseline models.
Other authors have used transformer-based models to generate word embeddings of question elements, which were then utilized by an attention-based neural network in order to predict the difficulty of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Their models outshone traditional similarity measures such as Jaccard or TF-IDF when used for this task.
Semantic models have also been employed in some MCQ prediction algorithms. These models operate under the assumption that all questions share a similar semantic structure and utilize various techniques, including long short-term memory (LSTM) and bidirectional LSTM, to encode question text into contextualized representations – with promising accuracy rates up to 80%!
Generation of Questions
Question generation is an integral component of machine learning. It enables students to assess themselves on their knowledge of a topic. In order to do this effectively, a system needs to identify irrelevant questions and replace them with more meaningful ones using techniques like natural language processing, pattern matching, and domain ontologies. A question-generation system like this one can help students improve test results while making passing exams much simpler.
Question-generation problems aim to generate questions that are both relevant to a text and in line with learning objectives and can be measured against ground truth questions or human evaluation. Fluency evaluation measures how well questions conform to grammar while still sounding natural when spoken aloud.
A knowledge graph is employed to generate questions. An ontology was constructed through Freebase and organized into categories like Person and Political_views; then, two different models for question-answer pairs in natural language were trained using this ontology: one identified keywords through sequence-to-sequence RNN learning while the second created questions using encoder-decoder architecture.
Recent advances in question generation include image-based systems using natural language processing to convert images to questions. Although more labor-intensive than traditional approaches, image-based question generation systems can be very effective; various strategies, such as wordnets, pattern matching, and domain ontologies, have been utilized for this task.
Machine learning methods are used to generate question-answer pairs from large corpora of textual documents. Examples include SQuAD, 30MQA, MS MARCO, RACE, NewsQA TriviaQA, and NarrativeQA datasets, which contain question/answer pairs but were not specifically created with this in mind.
Authors recently used a deep learning model to extract questions from natural-language documents using LSTMs for both encoder and decoder tasks and noise removal, along with a pre-decoding mechanism that stops words. Finally, these generated questions are then evaluated using cosine similarity metrics for aspects and question types.
Difficulty Measurement
Difficulty measurement is an integral component of machine learning. It provides valuable information about the effectiveness of training activities and can identify areas for improvement. Furthermore, difficulty measurement helps identify appropriate activities for specific students; too difficult actions may frustrate learners and drive them away, while too easy ones may not challenge them enough for accurate skill acquisition. Difficulty measurements can be performed using various methods like the SMEQ question paper to gather this valuable data.
The SMEQ is a simple questionnaire that asks participants to rate how difficult a task was for them, from “Not at all hard” to “Tremendously hard.” This scale measures mental effort instead of time spent to complete it, making the SMEQ an invaluable way of measuring perceived difficulty during human-machine interactions.
To accurately define difficulty measures, the following principles should be taken into consideration: (1) Difficulty should always be positive – there’s no sense in rating an activity as more complex than another – while progress and time play an integral part. Additionally, (3) it would be advantageous if difficulty could be represented graphically as a curve rather than as a single number value.
Task complexity should be distinguished from task difficulty. These two terms mustn’t become interchangeable since each can have very distinct connotations for the same task. Furthermore, complexity relates to an objective property of a job, while difficulty is an indicator of how the performer interacts with it.
Difficulty can be measured by dividing the number of correct responses by incorrect responses – also known as the difficulty index. This value provides an indicator of how difficult each question is for test-takers, as well as helps compare multiple questions against one another to identify those that pose more difficulty and distinguish among various kinds of inquiries.
Assessment
Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of computer science that deals with creating software capable of learning from data and making predictions, with applications including data analysis, pattern recognition, classification, and student performance assessment. Machine learning in education uses data collection methods like machine learning to identify gaps in knowledge or provide feedback; additionally, it can identify student needs to help develop skills or automate assessments, thereby saving time in grading assessments.
This research paper employs a machine learning approach to evaluate the quality of question papers. Relevance, answer length, and difficulty were the three factors identified as being essential to its quality by researchers through an in-depth survey, while modules were implemented automatically assessing each element and tested against an actual set of question papers to demonstrate effectiveness at assessing question quality.
The first module identifies whether individual questions in a question paper are pertinent, which is crucial as non-syllabus questions can be distracting to students and may lead them to lose focus. The system compares test set question papers against solution notes to identify those that are unnecessary, while the second module evaluates question similarity and model-answer similarity. Finally, time estimates ensure each question will be completed in an acceptable timeline during an examination.
Finale matrice est la ability to accurately anticipate how long each question will take to answer, which is an integral aspect of an examination for students who must answer many in a limited period. The system evaluates this time requirement of every test set question by comparing its answers against an estimated list from teachers – this allows it to discern which questions require longer answering times and which are more accessible.
