Optimizing Peer Learning in Online Groups with Affinities
Résumé
We investigate online group formation where members seek to increase their learning potential via collaboration. We capture two common learning models: LpA where each member learns from all higher skilled ones, and LpD where the least skilled member learns from the most skilled one. We formulate the problem of forming groups with the purpose of optimizing peer learning under different affinity structures: AffD where group affinity captures the two least collaborative members, and AffC where group affinity aggregates affinities between one member (e.g., the least skilled or the most skilled) and all others. This gives rise to multiple variants of a multi-objective optimization problem. We propose principled modeling of these problems and investigate theoretical and algorithmic challenges. We first present hardness results, and then develop compu-tationally efficient algorithms with constant approximation factors. Our real-data experiments demonstrate with statistical significance that forming groups considering affinity improves learning. Our extensive synthetic experiments demonstrate the qualitative and scalability aspects of our solutions.
Domaines
Informatique [cs]
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)