Neural Network Method in Text Message Categorization of Online Discussion

Abstract

This paper presents research in neural network approach for text messages categorization of collaborative learning skill in an online discussion. Although a neural network is a popular method for text categorization in the research area of machine learning, unfortunately, the use of neural network in educational settings is rare. Usually, text categorization by neural network is employed to categorize news articles, emails, product reviews, and web pages. In an online discussion, text categorization that is used to classify the message sent by the student into a certain category is often manual, requiring skilled human specialists. However, human categorization is not an effective way for a number of reasons; time- consuming, labor-intensive, lack of consistency in a category, and costly. Therefore, this paper proposes a neural network approach to code the message automatically. Results show that neural networks achieving useful classification on eight categories of collaborative learning skills in an online discussion as measured based on precision, recall, and balanced F-measure.