Cross-lingual recommendations in a resource-based learning scenario

Abstract

CROKODIL is a platform supporting resource-based learning scenarios for self-directed, on-task learning with web resources. As CROKODIL enables the forming of possibly large learning communities, the stored data is growing in a large scale. Thus, an appropriate recommendation of tags and learning resources becomes increasingly important for supporting learners. We propose semantic relatedness between tags and resources as a basis of recommendation and identify Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA) using Wikipedia as reference corpus as a viable option. However, data from CROKODIL shows that tags and resources are often composed in different languages. Thus, a monolingual approach to provide recommendations is not applicable in CROKODIL. Thus, we examine strategies for providing mappings between different languages, extending ESA to provide cross-lingual capabilities. Specifically, we present mapping strategies that utilize additional semantic information contained in Wikipedia. Based on CROKODIL's application scenario, we present an evaluation design and show results of cross-lingual ESA. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.