Standardizing Unstructured Interaction Data in Adaptive Instructional Systems

Abstract

Standardization of unstructured information such as freely generated verbal responses in adaptive instructional systems poses many challenges. For instance, free responses have no clear delimitation of knowledge components, i.e., basic learning units (BLU), and therefore identifying the BLUs in such responses automatically is a challenge. We will review and exemplify major challenges and solutions and make recommendations for standardization of such unstructured information. Our work will inform student models that rely on student free responses, domain models that are derived from textual sources such as textbooks or general resources such as Wikipedia, the interoperability of adaptive instructional systems with free text inputs, and learning record stores.