Education
Recommender systems and reinforcement learning for human-building interaction and context-aware support: A text mining-driven review of scientific literature
Zhang, Wenhao, Quintana, Matias, Miller, Clayton
The indoor environment significantly impacts human health and well-being; enhancing health and reducing energy consumption in these settings is a central research focus. With the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), recommendation systems and reinforcement learning (RL) have emerged as promising approaches to induce behavioral changes to improve the indoor environment and energy efficiency of buildings. This study aims to employ text mining and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to thoroughly examine the connections among these approaches in the context of human-building interaction and occupant context-aware support. The study analyzed 27,595 articles from the ScienceDirect database, revealing extensive use of recommendation systems and RL for space optimization, location recommendations, and personalized control suggestions. Furthermore, this review underscores the vast potential for expanding recommender systems and RL applications in buildings and indoor environments. Fields ripe for innovation include predictive maintenance, building-related product recommendation, and optimization of environments tailored for specific needs, such as sleep and productivity enhancements based on user feedback. The study also notes the limitations of the method in capturing subtle academic nuances. Future improvements could involve integrating and fine-tuning pre-trained language models to better interpret complex texts.
Data Augmentation for Sparse Multidimensional Learning Performance Data Using Generative AI
Zhang, Liang, Lin, Jionghao, Sabatini, John, Borchers, Conrad, Weitekamp, Daniel, Cao, Meng, Hollander, John, Hu, Xiangen, Graesser, Arthur C.
Learning performance data describe correct and incorrect answers or problem-solving attempts in adaptive learning, such as in intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs). Learning performance data tend to be highly sparse (80\%\(\sim\)90\% missing observations) in most real-world applications due to adaptive item selection. This data sparsity presents challenges to using learner models to effectively predict future performance explore new hypotheses about learning. This article proposes a systematic framework for augmenting learner data to address data sparsity in learning performance data. First, learning performance is represented as a three-dimensional tensor of learners' questions, answers, and attempts, capturing longitudinal knowledge states during learning. Second, a tensor factorization method is used to impute missing values in sparse tensors of collected learner data, thereby grounding the imputation on knowledge tracing tasks that predict missing performance values based on real observations. Third, a module for generating patterns of learning is used. This study contrasts two forms of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Generate Pre-Trained Transformers (GPT) to generate data associated with different clusters of learner data. We tested this approach on an adult literacy dataset from AutoTutor lessons developed for Adult Reading Comprehension (ARC). We found that: (1) tensor factorization improved the performance in tracing and predicting knowledge mastery compared with other knowledge tracing techniques without data augmentation, showing higher relative fidelity for this imputation method, and (2) the GAN-based simulation showed greater overall stability and less statistical bias based on a divergence evaluation with varying simulation sample sizes compared to GPT.
A3C-S: Automated Agent Accelerator Co-Search towards Efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning
Fu, Yonggan, Zhang, Yongan, Li, Chaojian, Yu, Zhongzhi, Lin, Yingyan Celine
Driven by the explosive interest in applying deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents to numerous real-time control and decision-making applications, there has been a growing demand to deploy DRL agents to empower daily-life intelligent devices, while the prohibitive complexity of DRL stands at odds with limited on-device resources. In this work, we propose an Automated Agent Accelerator Co-Search (A3C-S) framework, which to our best knowledge is the first to automatically co-search the optimally matched DRL agents and accelerators that maximize both test scores and hardware efficiency. Extensive experiments consistently validate the superiority of our A3C-S over state-of-the-art techniques.
Reflections from the 2024 Large Language Model (LLM) Hackathon for Applications in Materials Science and Chemistry
Zimmermann, Yoel, Bazgir, Adib, Afzal, Zartashia, Agbere, Fariha, Ai, Qianxiang, Alampara, Nawaf, Al-Feghali, Alexander, Ansari, Mehrad, Antypov, Dmytro, Aswad, Amro, Bai, Jiaru, Baibakova, Viktoriia, Biswajeet, Devi Dutta, Bitzek, Erik, Bocarsly, Joshua D., Borisova, Anna, Bran, Andres M, Brinson, L. Catherine, Calderon, Marcel Moran, Canalicchio, Alessandro, Chen, Victor, Chiang, Yuan, Circi, Defne, Charmes, Benjamin, Chaudhary, Vikrant, Chen, Zizhang, Chiu, Min-Hsueh, Clymo, Judith, Dabhadkar, Kedar, Daelman, Nathan, Datar, Archit, de Jong, Wibe A., Evans, Matthew L., Fard, Maryam Ghazizade, Fisicaro, Giuseppe, Gangan, Abhijeet Sadashiv, George, Janine, Gonzalez, Jose D. Cojal, Götte, Michael, Gupta, Ankur K., Harb, Hassan, Hong, Pengyu, Ibrahim, Abdelrahman, Ilyas, Ahmed, Imran, Alishba, Ishimwe, Kevin, Issa, Ramsey, Jablonka, Kevin Maik, Jones, Colin, Josephson, Tyler R., Juhasz, Greg, Kapoor, Sarthak, Kang, Rongda, Khalighinejad, Ghazal, Khan, Sartaaj, Klawohn, Sascha, Kuman, Suneel, Ladines, Alvin Noe, Leang, Sarom, Lederbauer, Magdalena, Sheng-Lun, null, Liao, null, Liu, Hao, Liu, Xuefeng, Lo, Stanley, Madireddy, Sandeep, Maharana, Piyush Ranjan, Maheshwari, Shagun, Mahjoubi, Soroush, Márquez, José A., Mills, Rob, Mohanty, Trupti, Mohr, Bernadette, Moosavi, Seyed Mohamad, Moßhammer, Alexander, Naghdi, Amirhossein D., Naik, Aakash, Narykov, Oleksandr, Näsström, Hampus, Nguyen, Xuan Vu, Ni, Xinyi, O'Connor, Dana, Olayiwola, Teslim, Ottomano, Federico, Ozhan, Aleyna Beste, Pagel, Sebastian, Parida, Chiku, Park, Jaehee, Patel, Vraj, Patyukova, Elena, Petersen, Martin Hoffmann, Pinto, Luis, Pizarro, José M., Plessers, Dieter, Pradhan, Tapashree, Pratiush, Utkarsh, Puli, Charishma, Qin, Andrew, Rajabi, Mahyar, Ricci, Francesco, Risch, Elliot, Ríos-García, Martiño, Roy, Aritra, Rug, Tehseen, Sayeed, Hasan M, Scheidgen, Markus, Schilling-Wilhelmi, Mara, Schloz, Marcel, Schöppach, Fabian, Schumann, Julia, Schwaller, Philippe, Schwarting, Marcus, Sharlin, Samiha, Shen, Kevin, Shi, Jiale, Si, Pradip, D'Souza, Jennifer, Sparks, Taylor, Sudhakar, Suraj, Talirz, Leopold, Tang, Dandan, Taran, Olga, Terboven, Carla, Tropin, Mark, Tsymbal, Anastasiia, Ueltzen, Katharina, Unzueta, Pablo Andres, Vasan, Archit, Vinchurkar, Tirtha, Vo, Trung, Vogel, Gabriel, Völker, Christoph, Weinreich, Jan, Yang, Faradawn, Zaki, Mohd, Zhang, Chi, Zhang, Sylvester, Zhang, Weijie, Zhu, Ruijie, Zhu, Shang, Janssen, Jan, Li, Calvin, Foster, Ian, Blaiszik, Ben
Here, we present the outcomes from the second Large Language Model (LLM) Hackathon for Applications in Materials Science and Chemistry, which engaged participants across global hybrid locations, resulting in 34 team submissions. The submissions spanned seven key application areas and demonstrated the diverse utility of LLMs for applications in (1) molecular and material property prediction; (2) molecular and material design; (3) automation and novel interfaces; (4) scientific communication and education; (5) research data management and automation; (6) hypothesis generation and evaluation; and (7) knowledge extraction and reasoning from scientific literature. Each team submission is presented in a summary table with links to the code and as brief papers in the appendix. Beyond team results, we discuss the hackathon event and its hybrid format, which included physical hubs in Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, Berlin, Lausanne, and Tokyo, alongside a global online hub to enable local and virtual collaboration. Overall, the event highlighted significant improvements in LLM capabilities since the previous year's hackathon, suggesting continued expansion of LLMs for applications in materials science and chemistry research. These outcomes demonstrate the dual utility of LLMs as both multipurpose models for diverse machine learning tasks and platforms for rapid prototyping custom applications in scientific research.
Adaptive Meta-learning-based Adversarial Training for Robust Automatic Modulation Classification
Bamdad, Amirmohammad, Owfi, Ali, Afghah, Fatemeh
DL-based automatic modulation classification (AMC) models are highly susceptible to adversarial attacks, where even minimal input perturbations can cause severe misclassifications. While adversarially training an AMC model based on an adversarial attack significantly increases its robustness against that attack, the AMC model will still be defenseless against other adversarial attacks. The theoretically infinite possibilities for adversarial perturbations mean that an AMC model will inevitably encounter new unseen adversarial attacks if it is ever to be deployed to a real-world communication system. Moreover, the computational limitations and challenges of obtaining new data in real-time will not allow a full training process for the AMC model to adapt to the new attack when it is online. To this end, we propose a meta-learning-based adversarial training framework for AMC models that substantially enhances robustness against unseen adversarial attacks and enables fast adaptation to these attacks using just a few new training samples, if any are available. Our results demonstrate that this training framework provides superior robustness and accuracy with much less online training time than conventional adversarial training of AMC models, making it highly efficient for real-world deployment.
Perspective Chapter: MOOCs in India: Evolution, Innovation, Impact, and Roadmap
With the largest population of the world and one of the highest enrolments in higher education, India needs efficient and effective means to educate its learners. India started focusing on open and digital education in 1980's and its efforts were escalated in 2009 through the NMEICT program of the Government of India. A study by the Government and FICCI in 2014 noted that India cannot meet its educational needs just by capacity building in brick and mortar institutions. It was decided that ongoing MOOCs projects under the umbrella of NMEICT will be further strengthened over its second (2017-21) and third (2021-26) phases. NMEICT now steers NPTEL or SWAYAM (India's MOOCs) and several digital learning projects including Virtual Labs, e-Yantra, Spoken Tutorial, FOSSEE, and National Digital Library on India - the largest digital education library in the world. Further, India embraced its new National Education Policy in 2020 to strongly foster online education. In this chapter, we take a deep look into the evolution of MOOCs in India, its innovations, its current status and impact, and the roadmap for the next decade to address its challenges and grow. AI-powered MOOCs is an emerging opportunity for India to lead MOOCs worldwide.
The Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Upper Secondary Mathematics Education Through the Lens of Technology Acceptance
Setälä, Mika, Heilala, Ville, Sikström, Pieta, Kärkkäinen, Tommi
This study investigated the students' perceptions of using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in upper-secondary mathematics education. Data was collected from Finnish high school students to represent how key constructs of the Technology Acceptance Model (Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Enjoyment, and Intention to Use) influence the adoption of AI tools. First, a structural equation model for a comparative study with a prior study was constructed and analyzed. Then, an extended model with the additional construct of Compatibility, which represents the alignment of AI tools with students' educational experiences and needs, was proposed and analyzed. The results demonstrated a strong influence of perceived usefulness on the intention to use GenAI, emphasizing the statistically significant role of perceived enjoyment in determining perceived usefulness and ease of use. The inclusion of compatibility improved the model's explanatory power, particularly in predicting perceived usefulness. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how AI tools can be integrated into mathematics education and highlights key differences between the Finnish educational context and previous studies based on structural equation modeling.
LEO-Split: A Semi-Supervised Split Learning Framework over LEO Satellite Networks
Lin, Zheng, Zhang, Yuxin, Chen, Zhe, Fang, Zihan, Wu, Cong, Chen, Xianhao, Gao, Yue, Luo, Jun
Recently, the increasing deployment of LEO satellite systems has enabled various space analytics (e.g., crop and climate monitoring), which heavily relies on the advancements in deep learning (DL). However, the intermittent connectivity between LEO satellites and ground station (GS) significantly hinders the timely transmission of raw data to GS for centralized learning, while the scaled-up DL models hamper distributed learning on resource-constrained LEO satellites. Though split learning (SL) can be a potential solution to these problems by partitioning a model and offloading primary training workload to GS, the labor-intensive labeling process remains an obstacle, with intermittent connectivity and data heterogeneity being other challenges. In this paper, we propose LEO-Split, a semi-supervised (SS) SL design tailored for satellite networks to combat these challenges. Leveraging SS learning to handle (labeled) data scarcity, we construct an auxiliary model to tackle the training failure of the satellite-GS non-contact time. Moreover, we propose a pseudo-labeling algorithm to rectify data imbalances across satellites. Lastly, an adaptive activation interpolation scheme is devised to prevent the overfitting of server-side sub-model training at GS. Extensive experiments with real-world LEO satellite traces (e.g., Starlink) demonstrate that our LEO-Split framework achieves superior performance compared to state-ofthe-art benchmarks.
Bayesian Active Learning By Distribution Disagreement
Werner, Thorben, Schmidt-Thieme, Lars
The ever growing need for data for machine learning science and applications has fueled a long history of Active Learning (AL) research, as it is able to reduce the amount of annotations necessary to train strong models. However, most research was done for classification problems, as it is generally easier to derive uncertainty quantification (UC) from classification output without changing the model or training procedure. This feat is a lot less common for regression models, with few historic exceptions like Gaussian Processes. This leads to regression problems being under-researched in AL literature. In this paper, we are focusing specifically on the area of regression and recent models with uncertainty quantification (UC) in the architecture. Recently, two main approaches of UC for regression problems have been researched: Firstly, Gaussian neural networks (GNN) [6, 14], which use a neural network to parametrize µ and σ parameters and build a Gaussian predictive distribution and secondly, Normalizing Flows [16, 4], which are parametrizing a free-form predictive distribution with invertible transformations to be able to model more complex target distributions. Their predictive distributions allow these models to not only be trained via Negative Log Likelihood (NLL), but also to draw samples from the predictive distribution as well as to compute the log likelihood of any given point y. Recent works [2, 1] have investigated the potential of uncertainty quantification with normalizing flows by experimenting on synthetic experiments with a known ground-truth uncertainty. Intuitively, a predictive distribution should inertly allow for a good uncertainty quantification (e.g.
SeFAR: Semi-supervised Fine-grained Action Recognition with Temporal Perturbation and Learning Stabilization
Huang, Yongle, Chen, Haodong, Xu, Zhenbang, Jia, Zihan, Sun, Haozhou, Shao, Dian
Human action understanding is crucial for the advancement of multimodal systems. While recent developments, driven by powerful large language models (LLMs), aim to be general enough to cover a wide range of categories, they often overlook the need for more specific capabilities. In this work, we address the more challenging task of Fine-grained Action Recognition (FAR), which focuses on detailed semantic labels within shorter temporal duration (e.g., "salto backward tucked with 1 turn"). Given the high costs of annotating fine-grained labels and the substantial data needed for fine-tuning LLMs, we propose to adopt semi-supervised learning (SSL). Our framework, SeFAR, incorporates several innovative designs to tackle these challenges. Specifically, to capture sufficient visual details, we construct Dual-level temporal elements as more effective representations, based on which we design a new strong augmentation strategy for the Teacher-Student learning paradigm through involving moderate temporal perturbation. Furthermore, to handle the high uncertainty within the teacher model's predictions for FAR, we propose the Adaptive Regulation to stabilize the learning process. Experiments show that SeFAR achieves state-of-the-art performance on two FAR datasets, FineGym and FineDiving, across various data scopes. It also outperforms other semi-supervised methods on two classical coarse-grained datasets, UCF101 and HMDB51. Further analysis and ablation studies validate the effectiveness of our designs. Additionally, we show that the features extracted by our SeFAR could largely promote the ability of multimodal foundation models to understand fine-grained and domain-specific semantics.