seqsense: Video recommendation using topic sequence mining

Abstract

This paper examines content-based recommendation in domains exhibiting sequential topical structure. An example is educational video, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in which knowledge builds within and across courses. Conventional content-based or collaborative filtering recommendation methods do not exploit courses’ sequential nature. We describe a system for video recommendation that combines topic-based video representation with sequential pattern mining of inter-topic relationships. Unsupervised topic modeling provides a scalable and domain-independent representation. We mine inter-topic relationships from manually constructed syllabi that instructors provide to guide students through their courses. This approach also allows the inclusion of multi-video sequences among the recommendation results. Integrating the resulting sequential information with content-level similarity provides relevant as well as diversified recommendations. Quantitative evaluation indicates that the proposed system, SeqSense, recommends fewer redundant videos than baseline methods, and instead emphasizes results consistent with mined topic transitions.