Related question recommendation for questions on students forums

The success of a course depends on various factors, of which timely response to students' queries in learning management systems (LMS) is significant. A timely response enhances student engagement, satisfaction, motivation and performance, while reducing delays and resultant stress due to waiting for the question to be answered. In the past, with courses having limited number of enrollments, it was possible for course convenors or lecturer-in-charge (LIC) to answer students' queries in a timely manner and stay on the top of their course management. However, with the increasing number of students in courses every year, it has been challenging to respond to students’ queries in a timely manner. Based on our experience of teaching COMP9444 course for the last 3 terms, we found that, within a day there are more than 50 questions that need to be answered by LIC or the teaching staff (based on enrollment of about 600 students enrolled in a term). Based on our experience of answering these questions, we found that many of these questions are repetitive and often have been answered previously.

The aim of this project is the preliminary investigation and development of an automated system that can check whether a question has been answered previously. If yes, the system will provide reference to the answer for the similar question asked. Also, there will be feedback in the form of human-in-the-loop allowing students to rate how accurately the previously answered question has been useful in answering their actual question. If successful, this could be expanded for other courses in the school and even the broader education industry.