Classification of acoustical signals by combining active learning strategies with semi-supervised learning schemes

EduNER: a Chinese named entity recognition dataset for education research

A high-quality domain-oriented dataset is crucial for the domain-specific named entity recognition (NER) task. In this study, we introduce a novel education-oriented Chinese NER dataset (EduNER). To provide representative and diverse training data, we collect data from multiple sources, including textbooks, academic papers, and education-related web pages. The collected documents span ten years (2012-2021). A team of domain experts is invited to accomplish the education NER schema definition, and a group of trained annotators is hired to complete the annotation. A collaborative labeling platform is built for accelerating human annotation. The constructed EduNER dataset includes 16 entity types, 11k+ sentences, and 35,731 entities. We conduct a thorough statistical analysis of EduNER and summarize its distinctive characteristics by comparing it with eight open-domain or domain-specific NER datasets. Sixteen state-of-the-art models are further utilized for NER tasks validation. The experimental results can enlighten further exploration. To the best of our knowledge, EduNER is the first publicly available dataset for NER task in the education domain, which may promote the development of education-oriented NER models.

DRE: density-based data selection with entropy for adversarial-robust deep learning models

Active learning helps software developers reduce the labeling cost when building high-quality machine learning models. A core component of active learning is the acquisition function that determines which data should be selected to annotate.State-of-the-art (SOTA) acquisition functions focus on clean performance (e.g. accuracy) but disregard robustness (an important quality property), leading to fragile models with negligible robustness (less than 0.20%). In this paper, we first propose to integrate adversarial training into active learning (adversarial-robust active learning, ARAL) to produce robust models. Our empirical study on 11 acquisition functions and 15105 trained deep neural networks (DNNs) shows that ARAL can produce models with robustness ranging from 2.35% to 63.85%. Our study also reveals, however, that the acquisition functions that perform well on accuracy are worse than random sampling when it comes to robustness. Via examining the reasons behind this, we devise the density-based robust sampling with entropy (DRE) to target both clean performance and robustness. The core idea of DRE is to maintain a balance between selected data and the entire set based on the entropy density distribution. DRE outperforms SOTA functions in terms of robustness by up to 24.40%, while remaining competitive on accuracy. Additionally, the in-depth evaluation shows that DRE is applicable as a test selection metric for model retraining and stands out from all compared functions by up to 8.21% robustness.

Predicting Students at Risk of Dropout in Technical Course Using LMS Logs

Educational data mining is a process that aims at discovering patterns that provide insight into teaching and learning processes. This work uses Machine Learning techniques to create a student performance prediction model, using academic data and records from a Learning Management System, that correlates with success or failure in completing the course. Six algorithms were employed, with models trained at three different stages of their two-year course completion. We tested the models with records of 394 students from 3 courses. Random Forest provided the best results with 84.47% on the F1 score in our experiments, followed by Decision Tree obtaining similar results in the first subjects. We also employ clustering techniques and find different behavior groups with a strong correlation to performance. This work contributes to predicting students at risk of dropping out, offers insight into understanding student behavior, and provides a support mechanism for academic managers to take corrective and preventive actions on this problem.

Endogenous growth factors and their empirical verification in the Colombian business context by applying fuzzy measurement techniques

This paper centers on the role and economic effect of the factors that affect the endogenous growth of organizations. To this end, it analyzes the case of Colombian companies, whose economy has been characterized in Latin America by maintaining a traditional economic policy and sectors that seek to maximize the opportunities offered by international markets. This study seeks to identify and analyze the factors that influence the endogenous economic growth of organizations and that allow them to be sustainable over time. For this purpose, adaptation algorithms based on fuzzy logics and supervised and unsupervised learning methods were used, generating an adaptation strategy that allows classifying and knowing the endogenous growth of companies in the Colombian context and identifying the most relevant aspects to take into account. Finally, it was found that most Colombian companies focus their business policies on strengthening human capital, followed by innovation, financial resources and, to a lesser extent, strategic alliances.