Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

Recommender systems have been researched extensively by the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) community during the last decade. By identifying suitable resources from a potentially overwhelming variety of choices, such systems offer a promising approach to facilitate both learning and teaching tasks. As learning is taking place in extremely diverse and rich environments, the incorporation of contextual information about the user in the recommendation process has attracted major interest. Such contextualization is researched as a paradigm for building intelligent systems that can better predict and anticipate the needs of users, and act more efficiently in response to their behavior. In this paper, we try to assess the degree to which current work in TEL recommender systems has achieved this, as well as outline areas in which further work is needed. First, we present a context framework that identifies relevant context dimensions for TEL applications. Then, we present an analysis of existing TEL recommender systems along these dimensions. Finally, based on our survey results, we outline topics on which further research is needed.

Context-Aware Recommender Systems for Learning: A Survey and Future Challenges

Text categorization-assignment of natural language texts to one or more predefined categories based on their content-is an important component in many information organization and management tasks.Different automatic learning algorithms for text categori-zation have different classification accuracy.Very accurate text classifiers can be learned automatically from training examples.

Inductive learning algorithms and representations for text categorization

This paper will present the general goal of and inspiration for our work on learning analytics, that relies on attention metadata for visualization and recommendation. Through information visualization techniques, we can provide a dashboard for learners and teachers, so that they no longer need to "drive blind". Moreover, recommendation can help to deal with the "paradox of choice" and turn abundance from a problem into an asset for learning.

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Attention please!: learning analytics for visualization and recommendation

'Understanding context is vital' [1] and 'context is key' [2] signal the key interest in the context detection field. One important challenge in this area is automatically detecting the user's task because once it is known it is possible to support her better. In this paper we propose an ontology-based user interaction context model (UICO) that enhances the performance of task detection on the user's computer desktop. Starting from low-level contextual attention meta-data captured from the user's desktop, we utilize rule-based, information extraction and machine learning approaches to automatically populate this user interaction context model. Furthermore we automatically derive relations between the model's entities and automatically detect the user's task. We present evaluation results of a large-scale user study we carried out in a knowledge-intensive business environment, which support our approach.

UICO: an ontology-based user interaction context model for automatic task detection on the computer desktop

Improving the productivity of knowledge workers is an open research challenge. Our approach is based on providing a large variety of knowledge services which take the current work task and information need (work context) of the knowledge worker into account. In the following we present the DYONIPOS application which strives to automatically identify a user’s work task and then contextualizes different types of knowledge services accordingly. These knowledge services then provide information (documents, people, locations) both from the user’s personal as well as from the organizational environment. The utility and functionality is illustrated along a real world application scenario at the Ministry of Finance in Austria.

Context-Aware Knowledge Services

dasiaContext is keypsila conveys the importance of capturing the digital environment of a knowledge worker. Knowing the userpsilas context offers various possibilities for support, like for example enhancing information delivery or providing work guidance. Hence, user interactions have to be aggregated and mapped to predefined task categories. Without machine learning tools, such an assignment has to be done manually. The identification of suitable machine learning algorithms is necessary in order to ensure accurate and timely classification of the userpsilas context without inducing additional workload. This paper provides a methodology for recording user interactions and an analysis of supervised classification models, feature types and feature selection for automatically detecting the current task and context of a user. Our analysis is based on a real world data set and shows the applicability of machine learning techniques.

Analysis of machine learning techniques for context extraction

In a knowledge-intensive business environment, knowledge workers perform their tasks in highly creative ways. This essential freedom required by knowledge workers often conflicts with their organization's need for standardization, control, and transparency. Within this context, the research project DYONIPOS aims to mitigate this contradiction by supporting the process engineer with insights into the process executer's working behavior. These insights constitute the basis for balanced process modeling. DYONIPOS provides a process engineer support environment with advanced process modeling services, such as process visualization, standard process validation, and ad-hoc process analysis and optimization services.

Andreas S. Rath

Papers

UICO: an ontology-based user interaction context model for automatic task detection on the computer desktop

Context-Aware Knowledge Services

Analysis of machine learning techniques for context extraction

Synergizing standard and ad-hoc processes

Low-Level Event Relationship Discovery for Knowledge Work Support