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User-Adaptive Preparation of Mathematical Puzzles Using Item Response Theory and Deep Learning

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11606))

Abstract

The growing use of computer-like tablets and PCs in educational settings is enabling more students to study online courses featuring computer-aided tests. Preparing these tests imposes a large burden on teachers who have to prepare a large number of questions because they cannot reuse the same questions many times as students can easily memorize their solutions and share them with other students, which degrades test reliability. Another burden is appropriately setting the level of question difficulty to ensure test discriminability. Using magic square puzzles as examples of mathematical questions, we developed a method for automatically preparing puzzles with appropriate levels of difficulty. We used crowdsourcing to collect answers to sample questions to evaluate their difficulty. Item response theory was used to evaluate the difficulty of the questions from crowdworkers’ answers. Deep learning was then used to build a model for predicting the difficulty of new questions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP15H02782 and JP18H03337, and by the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation.

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Correspondence to Ryota Sekiya .

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Sekiya, R., Oyama, S., Kurihara, M. (2019). User-Adaptive Preparation of Mathematical Puzzles Using Item Response Theory and Deep Learning. In: Wotawa, F., Friedrich, G., Pill, I., Koitz-Hristov, R., Ali, M. (eds) Advances and Trends in Artificial Intelligence. From Theory to Practice. IEA/AIE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11606. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22999-3_46

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22999-3_46

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22998-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22999-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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