Personalized and Explainable Employee Training Course Recommendations: A Bayesian Variational Approach

As a major component of strategic talent management, learning and development (L&D) aims at improving the individual and organization performances through planning tailored training for employees to increase and improve their skills and knowledge. While many companies have developed the learning management systems (LMSs) for facilitating the online training of employees, a long-standing important issue is how to achieve personalized training recommendations with the consideration of their needs for future career development. To this end, in this article, we present a focused study on the explainable personalized online course recommender system for enhancing employee training and development. Specifically, we first propose a novel end-to-end hierarchical framework, namely Demand-aware Collaborative Bayesian Variational Network (DCBVN), to jointly model both the employees’ current competencies and their career development preferences in an explainable way. In DCBVN, we first extract the latent interpretable representations of the employees’ competencies from their skill profiles with autoencoding variational inference based topic modeling. Then, we develop an effective demand recognition mechanism for learning the personal demands of career development for employees. In particular, all the above processes are integrated into a unified Bayesian inference view for obtaining both accurate and explainable recommendations. Furthermore, for handling the employees with sparse or missing skill profiles, we develop an improved version of DCBVN, called the Demand-aware Collaborative Competency Attentive Network (DCCAN) framework , by considering the connectivity among employees. In DCCAN, we first build two employee competency graphs from learning and working aspects. Then, we design a graph-attentive network and a multi-head integration mechanism to infer one’s competency information from her neighborhood employees. Finally, we can generate explainable recommendation results based on the competency representations. Extensive experimental results on real-world data clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and the interpretability of both of our frameworks, as well as their robustness on sparse and cold-start scenarios.

Online teaching research in universities based on blockchain

This study explores the use of blockchain in the course design and evaluation in Chinese universities, and explores the value of teachers’ views and experiences on blockchain in the course design. Previous studies have shown that blockchain has a positive effect on the improvement of online teaching management and evaluation quality. Most of the current research focuses on the management of online teaching by using blockchain, and this qualitative case study investigates the design and evaluation of online course based on blockchain by five teachers of different specialties. Semi-structured interviews and course materials were collected from five teachers for a TPACK framework analysis. The result of the survey emphasizes that the redesign of online courses based on blockchain can improve the matching between blockchain and courses, the quality of teaching and the trust of various parties in online education. The block chain-based the online course of both theory and practice design and evaluation, which is oriented by the index method of capability evaluation, is an appropriate idea and has achieved good results. The experimental course focuses on the integration of blockchain and experimental platform. The immersive and interactive course presentation and the personalized examination based on machine learning are effective. But follow-up should pay attention to the different requirements of course design of different disciplines, using a variety of data sources for analysis, to take measures to enhance the enthusiasm of teachers to adopt new technologies.

Engagement during Pandemic Teaching: Report of The Eaai-21 Panel on Teaching Online and Blended AI Courses

Three panelists, Ashok Goel, Ansaf Salleb-Aouissi and Mehran Sahami explain some of the tools and techniques they used to keep their students engaged during virtual instruction. The techniques include the desire to take one’s passion for the learning materials to the virtual classroom, to ensure teacher presence, provide for cognitive engagement with the subject and facilitate social interactions. Finally, we learn about tools used to manage a large online course so as to move the many active learning exercises to the virtual classroom.

Rethinking Education in the Raw Materials Sector through Tailor-Made Teaching Methodologies

This article presents a methodology applied to the design of a tailor-made program for teaching staff that addresses the needs of high-level educational institutions in the Eastern and South-Eastern European (ESEE) region. The tailor-made program was implemented as a one-week online course for 22 “Trainees” from six ESEE universities earlier in 2021. “Trainees” from six participating universities are currently developing acceleration programs, planned to occur continuously until 2024, increasing the percentage of the trained academic staff to >50% at each of the six universities. During that period, 240 students will benefit from 140 improved RawMaterials-related courses, improving their learning and understanding.

Effectiveness of virtual teaching of diagnostic and interventional imaging fundamentals to Egyptian medical students: an analytical cross-sectional study

Background There is a worldwide deficit in teaching and training in the field of radiology for undergraduate medical students. This educational gap is prominent in many medical schools as most radiology curricula are a part of other specialty trainings, usually provided by non-radiologists. After COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased trend in online education. However, questions have been raised about the efficacy and acceptance of online education. We developed a course on the principles of radiology and medical imaging basics to target Egyptian medical students. We then assessed the impact of these educational videos through several online surveys. Our "The Principles of Radiology Online Course" was delivered to students at various Egyptian medical schools; it was a prerecorded series composed of nine sessions, and each session followed the sequence of a pre-test, video, and post-test. There was a final survey to assess the overall feedback. Finally, we analyzed the results to give insight onto how teaching radiology through online lectures can help build better physicians. Results Among various medical schools around Egypt, 1396 Egyptian medical students joined this cohort. Cohort population percentage was 56% female and 44% male. Ninety-eight percent of the students agreed that this program increased their understanding of radiology. Eighty-four percent of the students found the platform friendly and easy to use. Seventy-nine percent found these webinars were more convenient compared to in-person education. Statistical significance (p-value < 0.05) was achieved in all sessions after comparing students’ pre and post-test scores, and in students’ confidence and knowledge level before and after the course. Conclusions Radiology is an underrepresented subject for a lot of medical students. Online radiology webinars have proven to be a promising method of teaching medical students key medical imaging concepts. An online course of radiology basics and principles can help improve a medical student’s knowledge and enhance overall future patient care.

Measuring online self-regulated learning among early-career medical doctors in a Massive Open Online Course on COVID-19

Introduction: As significant autonomy is given in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), online self-regulated learning (SRL) ability is crucial in such courses. We aim to measure the online SRL abilities of early-career medical doctors enrolled in a MOOC. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study using the Self-Regulated Online Learning Questionnaire-revised version (SOL-Qr). We conducted a three-stage cross-cultural validation of the SOL-Qr, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The online SRL ability of 5,432 medical doctors enrolled in a MOOC was measured using the validated SOL-Qr. Results: The CFA of the cross-translated SOL-Qr confirmed its comparability to the original version, with excellent validity & reliability. Participants showed high levels of online SRL during their early careers. Despite high online SRL scores, MOOC completion rate was low. Male participants showed slightly better time management ability than female participants. Participants working in the primary epicentrum for COVID-19 in the country showed lower online SRL scores, while participants who graduated from higher accreditation levels showed better time management ability. Conclusion: The SOL-Qr and its subscales are suitable and valid for measuring the online SRL abilities of medical doctors in a MOOC during their early-career period. Time management ability was associated with previous experience during the medical education period, while other online SRL subscales were mostly associated with workload. However, as the scores did not correlate with the time spent for learning in MOOC, the corresponding learning effort or time spent may be beyond just the commitment to the described MOOC.

Measuring online self-regulated learning among early-career medical doctors in a Massive Open Online Course on COVID-19

Introduction: As significant autonomy is given in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), online self-regulated learning (SRL) ability is crucial in such courses. We aim to measure the online SRL abilities of early-career medical doctors enrolled in a MOOC. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study using the Self-Regulated Online Learning Questionnaire-revised version (SOL-Qr). We conducted a three-stage cross-cultural validation of the SOL-Qr, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The online SRL ability of 5,432 medical doctors enrolled in a MOOC was measured using the validated SOL-Qr. Results: The CFA of the cross-translated SOL-Qr confirmed its comparability to the original version, with excellent validity & reliability. Participants showed high levels of online SRL during their early careers. Despite high online SRL scores, MOOC completion rate was low. Male participants showed slightly better time management ability than female participants. Participants working in the primary epicentrum for COVID-19 in the country showed lower online SRL scores, while participants who graduated from higher accreditation levels showed better time management ability. Conclusion: The SOL-Qr and its subscales are suitable and valid for measuring the online SRL abilities of medical doctors in a MOOC during their early-career period. Time management ability was associated with previous experience during the medical education period, while other online SRL subscales were mostly associated with workload. However, as the scores did not correlate with the time spent for learning in MOOC, the corresponding learning effort or time spent may be beyond just the commitment to the described MOOC.

Towards Adaptive Gamification: A Method Using Dynamic Player Profile and a Case Study

The design of gamified experiences following the one-fits-all approach uses the same game elements for all users participating in the experience. The alternative is adaptive gamification, which considers that users have different playing motivations. Some adaptive approaches use a (static) player profile gathered at the beginning of the experience; thus, the user experience fits this player profile uncovered through the use of a player type questionnaire. This paper presents a dynamic adaptive method which takes players’ profiles as initial information and also considers how these profiles change over time based on users’ interactions and opinions. Then, the users are provided with a personalized experience through the use of game elements that correspond to their dynamic playing profile. We describe a case study in the educational context, a course integrated on Nanomoocs, a massive open online course (MOOC) platform. We also present a preliminary evaluation of the approach by means of a simulator with bots that yields promising results when compared to baseline methods. The bots simulate different types of users, not so much to evaluate the effects of gamification (i.e., the completion rate), but to validate the convergence and validity of our method. The results show that our method achieves a low error considering both situations: when the user accurately (Err = 0.0070) and inaccurately (Err = 0.0243) answers the player type questionnaire.

The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Medical Education: A Case Study at a Public University in Romania

The spread of COVID-19 in 2020 forced universities around the world to transfer on-site education to a virtual environment. The main goal of this study was to compare the experiences regarding online learning of students in programs that require clinical experiences with those of students in programs that do not require such experiences. The authors hypothesized that the switch to online instruction has affected medical students more profoundly than other students. Using a convenience sample of students at a Romanian university, the researchers explored differences between the two groups related to technical and personal problems, course quality, and instructional strategies used by faculty. The results indicate that medical students who could not participate in clinical experiences were significantly less satisfied with the transition to online learning than students in other programs. One implication of these results is that faculty teaching in medical schools need to improve in three areas related to online course quality: pedagogy, course content, and course preparation.