A simple yet effective interpretable bayesian personalized ranking for cognitive diagnosis
In ECAI 2024 - 27th european conference on artificial intelligence
Abstract
In the field of education, the automatic assessment of student profiles has become a crucial objective, driven by the rapid expansion of online tutoring systems and computerized adaptive testing. These technologies aim to democratize education and enhance student assessment by providing detailed insights into student profiles, which are essential for accurately predicting the outcomes of exercises, such as solving various types of mathematical equations. We aim to develop a model capable of predicting responses to a large set of questions within the Multi-Target Prediction framework while ensuring that this model is explainable, allowing us to quantify student performance in specific knowledge areas. Existing cognitive diagnosis algorithms often struggle to meet the dual requirement of accurately predicting exercise outcomes and maintaining interpretability. To address this challenge, we propose an alternative to the complexity of current advanced machine learning models. Instead, we introduce a direct yet highly effective Bayesian Personalized Ranking algorithm, called CD-BPR, which incorporates interpretability as a core learning objective. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CD-BPR not only performs better in predicting exercise outcomes but also provides superior interpretability of estimated student profiles, thus fulfilling both key requirements.