A fine-grained and multi-context-aware learning path recommendation model over knowledge graphs for online learning communities

Abstract

Existing approaches to learning path recommendation for online learning communities mainly rely on the individual characteristics of users or the historical records of their learning processes, but pay less attention to the semantics of users’ postings and the context. To facilitate the knowledge understanding and personalized learning of users in online learning communities, it is necessary to conduct a fine-grained analysis of user data to capture their dynamical learning characteristics and potential knowledge levels, so as to recommend appropriate learning paths. In this paper, we propose a fine-grained and multi-context-aware learning path recommendation model for online learning communities based on a knowledge graph. First, we design a multidimensional knowledge graph to solve the problem of monotonous and incomplete entity information presentation of the single layer knowledge graph. Second, we use the topic preference features of users’ postings to determine the starting point of learning paths. We then strengthen the distant relationship of knowledge in the global context using the multidimensional knowledge graph when generating and recommending learning paths. Finally, we build a user background similarity matrix to establish user connections in the local context to recommend users with similar knowledge levels and learning preferences and synchronize their subsequent postings. Experiment results show that the proposed model can recommend appropriate learning paths for users, and the recommended similar users and postings are effective.