Course map learning with graph convolutional network based on AuCM

Abstract

Concept map provides a concise structured representation of knowledge in the educational scenario. It consists of various concepts connected by prerequisite dependencies. With the abundance of educational resources available through MOOCs, encyclopedias, and electronic textbooks, extracting prerequisite dependencies and building concept maps becomes feasible. However, publicly accessible taxonomies or learning object information that can help identify prerequisites are rare. To address this, we have constructed a comprehensive dataset called the Australian Course Map data (AuCM), specifically tailored for training concept maps in the IT/CS field. The dataset comprises course descriptions from 14 different Australian universities. To identify prerequisite relationships between course concepts, we have employed an embedding-based approach that combines the Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) with pairwise features of concepts. We have evaluated the performance of our model with non-neural classifiers and neural networks for extracting these prerequisite relations.