Entity ranking in Wikipedia: utilising categories,links and topic difficulty prediction

Entity ranking has recently emerged as a research field that aims at retrieving entities as answers to a query. Unlike entity extraction where the goal is to tag names of entities in documents, entity ranking is primarily focused on returning a ranked list of relevant entity names for the query. Many approaches to entity ranking have been proposed, and most of them were evaluated on the INEX Wikipedia test collection. In this paper, we describe a system we developed for ranking Wikipedia entities in answer to a query. The entity ranking approach implemented in our system utilises the known categories, the link structure of Wikipedia, as well as the link co-occurrences with the entity examples (when provided) to retrieve relevant entities as answers to the query. We also extend our entity ranking approach by utilising the knowledge of predicted classes of topic difficulty. To predict the topic difficulty, we generate a classifier that uses features extracted from an INEX topic definition to classify the topic into an experimentally pre-determined class. This knowledge is then utilised to dynamically set the optimal values for the retrieval parameters of our entity ranking system. Our experiments demonstrate that the use of categories and the link structure of Wikipedia can significantly improve entity ranking effectiveness, and that topic difficulty prediction is a promising approach that could also be exploited to further improve the entity ranking performance.     

A Look at Global Expansion for e-Books

Forecasts indicate a growing demand for digital content around the world. Converting to digital content can open up countless new revenue possibilities. Adding alternate channels may be worth consideration, but what are the options and what does it take to utilize them effectively? This article explores the opportunities that potentially exist for publishers with content that may be digitized and distributed to global markets. A brief review of the current marketplace is also incorporated, including current players and trends. Finally, an analysis of some of the potential issues, challenges and pitfalls is presented in context of delving into a new international digital content distribution strategy.     

Learning to rank with (a lot of) word features

In this article we present Supervised Semantic Indexing which defines a class of nonlinear (quadratic) models that are discriminatively trained to directly map from the word content in a query-document or document-document pair to a ranking score. Like Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), our models take account of correlations between words (synonymy, polysemy). However, unlike LSI our models are trained from a supervised signal directly on the ranking task of interest, which we argue is the reason for our superior results. As the query and target texts are modeled separately, our approach is easily generalized to different retrieval tasks, such as cross-language retrieval or online advertising placement. Dealing with models on all pairs of words features is computationally challenging. We propose several improvements to our basic model for addressing this issue, including low rank (but diagonal preserving) representations, correlated feature hashing and sparsification. We provide an empirical study of all these methods on retrieval tasks based on Wikipedia documents as well as an Internet advertisement task. We obtain state-of-the-art performance while providing realistically scalable methods.     

Effects of schoolwide cluster grouping and within-class ability grouping on elementary school students’ academic achievement growth

We evaluated the effects of one year of schoolwide cluster grouping on the academic achievement growth of gifted and non-identified elementary students using a piecewise multilevel growth model. Scores from 186 non-identified and 68 gifted students’ Measures of Academic Progress Reading and Math scores were examined over three school years. In 2008–2009 within-class ability grouping was used. In 2009–2010 schoolwide cluster grouping was implemented. In 2010–2011 students once again were grouped only within classrooms by ability and students identified as gifted were spread across all classrooms at each grade level. Results suggest that schoolwide cluster grouping influenced student performance in the year following its implementation, but only for mathematics and not the area of reading.     

The development of beginning mathematics teacher pedagogical content knowledge

Recent research efforts (Schmidt et al. in The preparation gap: teacher education for middle school mathematics in six countries, MSU Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, 2007) demonstrate that teacher development programs in high-performing countries offer experiences that are designed to develop both mathematical knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. However, identifying the nature of the mathematical knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) required for effective teaching remains elusive (Ball et al. in J Teacher Educ 59:389–407, 2008). Building on the initial conceptual framework of Magnusson et al. (Examining pedagogical content knowledge, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 95–132, 1999), we examined the PCK development for two beginning middle and secondary mathematics teachers in an alternative certification program. The PCK development of these two individuals varied due to their focus on developing particular aspects of their PCK, with one individual focusing on assessment and student understanding, and the other individual focusing on curricular knowledge. Our findings indicate that these individuals privileged particular aspects of their knowledge, leading to differences in their PCK development. This study provides insight into the specific aspects of PCK that developed through the course of actual instructional practice, providing a lens for future research in this area.     

Event-Konzepte

In view of processes of individualization and pluralization, the requirements for living in modern societies result in significantly increased complexity of social constructions of reality. Especially for individualized juvenile people new forms of communities are a constitutive feature of social lifestyle progression and rearrangement. Within events a specific type of these juvenile communalities emerges. Based on two different cases, a music festival and an improvisational theater performance, this paper emphasizes a crucial similarity of events: the use of (physical) staging as a social mechanism for integration and distinction. The process of ‘eventization’ (i.e., spectacularization) provides a framework for action, in which emotional as well as mental affiliations constitute.     

Editorial: Kompetenzmodelle zur Erfassung individueller Lernergebnisse und zur Bilanzierung von Bildungsprozessen

This special issue comprises eleven articles from the DFG priority program “Competence Models for Assessing Individual Learning Outcomes and Evaluating Educational Processes”. The special issue aims at showing the priority program’s present state of discussion concerning essential concepts and questions related to the modeling of competencies. The first article describes the structure and research areas of the program and gives an overview on the current state of research. The short articles two to eleven discuss questions and problems which proved to be of particular importance during the work of the priority program in the last years. These articles constitute the result of a workshop of the participating scientists of the priority program in terms of position papers.     

Transferwirkungen künstlerischer Tätigkeiten. Ihre kritische Kommentierung durch eine umfassende Theorie ästhetischer Bildung

Transfer research examines how artistic activities can have an impact outside of the realm of art itself. The article concludes that this research can be carried out in a meaningful way, only within the framework of a comprehensive theory of aesthetic education. This theory would encompass the structural analysis of artistic activity, as well as biographical reports about artistic experiences. The elucidation of the concepts or themes relevant to the theory would include the notion of aesthetic experience, the understanding of immediate, aesthetic experiences, the analysis of artistic processes, and the outcomes of scientifically evaluated applications of aesthetic education.     

Wann kann Kompetenzdiagnostik negative Auswirkungen haben?

This paper addresses potential negative effects of systematic external competence assessment on different levels of the education system. We discuss possible sources of misinterpretations of competence assessment feedback, potential consequences of feedback and assessment for different education stakeholders (teachers, students, and educational administration) as well as negative effects of systematic competence assessment on the culture of teaching and learning. The paper concludes with some reflections on possibilities to prevent or reduce the discussed negative effects.