The Future of Education

This paper reports on the possibility of using a variation of the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) method to support learning assessment in computer-mediated courses in the International Relations program at the American University of Kuwait (AUK) created during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. LSA is a mathematical technique for extracting and inferring relations of expected word usage by statistical computation applied to a corpus of text. The central purpose of this paper is three-fold. First and foremost, the paper uses a variant of the LSA to assess the expected usage of digital text (notetaking) created by students after interacting with e-lectures provided by the professor in the course entitled, "Current Trends in International Relations (IR202)." Second, the paper explores the relationship between the automated feedback produced by the LSA variant to the assessment data produced by the audio transcriptions of computer-mediated student-teacher oral examinations in Zoom sessions. Finally, the paper endeavors to study the teaching, learning and assessment benefits of automating the feedback/checking of student digital notes, the digital lectures provided by the instructor, and the digital record of oral examination made possible by the digital environment created by the Professor in response to running IR 202 as online courses during the pandemic.  Much of the learning that inspires this experiment is based on three projects. The first initiative involved using semantic databases to deliver two courses in the Department of Political Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Fall 2003 and Spring 2004. The learning objective of these two courses, entitled "Multiple Perspectives on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East (PSAP289C)" was to increase the student's knowledge and appreciation for US and Arab perspectives that frame the formulation and implementation of US policy in the Middle East. The second project consisted of delivering two consecutive introductory courses, entitled, "Introduction to International Relations (IR 101)" in in the Department of International Relations at AUK from Fall, 2010 to Fall, 2012. These courses were designed to survey the basic concepts and theoretical approaches used in the field of International Relations to analyze international politics. The third project entailed using a variant of the LSA method to assess student computer-mediated note taking created during the second set of courses delivered from Fall, 2010 to Fall, 2012. All three projects endeavored to combine teaching and technology in ways that promoted critical thinking, reading and writing, effective communication and problem solving.

Keywords: student assessment, latent semantic analysis.

References
[1] Kulchitsky, D. Roman. Zeid,  A. and Ahmed Hamza. “The Efficacy of LSA (Variant) – Based Feedback for Assessing Student Learning in an Introductory Relations Course,” In P. Lake and P. Layne (Eds.), Global Innovation of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Transgressing Boundaries, December, 2014.
[2] Beydoun, G., Kulchitsky, D. R. and Grace Manasseh, “Evolving Semantic Web with Social Navigation,” Expert Systems with Application, 32 (2) (February, 2007): pp. 265-276.