Intelligent and collaborative Q&A mechanism based on learning communities

Abstract

Q&A is a very important step of a process of learning. This paper analyses some problems in Q&A which both teachers and learners are facing in e-learning, and proposes a novel Q&A mechanism combining automatic Q&A and collaborative Q&A technologies. In detail, this paper proposes an intelligent answer machine using Semantic Words, Keywords and their respective weights to describe the feature of a question, a keywords reverse abstracting policy, and a question matching algorithm; this paper also proposes a personalized question deliver policy to other learners with high enough login frequence, low question load and in the same learning community where all learners have similar interests, and a promoting mechanism for collaborative Q&A. By this novel Q&A mechanism, this paper hopes to offer a timely response to a learner's question, and reduce the load on teachers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.