The efficacy of LSA (variant)-based feedback for assessing student learning in an introductory international relations course

The proliferation of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr), communication tools (such as WhatsApp and Skype), and data storage (such as Cloud Computing) have transformed the way educators and students collect, distribute, and interact with digital data in the classroom (Beydoun and Kulchitsky, Expert Syst Appl 32:265–276, 2007; Anderson and Whitelock, JIME 7:1–15, 2004; Trudeau 2004). This kind of technological informatization has, in turn, not only transformed the way courses are being designed and delivered (Beydoun and Kulchitsky (Expert Syst Appl 32:265–276, 2007) but has also created new opportunities for learning and its assessment. The purpose of this chapter is to study how automating and using the feedback/checking of student notes can support teaching and learning activities in an introductory level International Relations course at the American University of Kuwait. The course entitled, “Introduction to International Relations (IR101)” is taught every semester and is designed to introduce first and second year students to the most common theories, approaches, and issues in the field of International Relations. The course utilizes activities such as stand-up lectures, group projects, game simulations, and reading and writing assignments to promote critical thinking, reading and writing, communication and problem solving. A variation of the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is employed to extract and infer relations from the qualitative data created by students’ and the teacher during their interactions with digital information. The research is made possible by the collaboration of professors in the International Relations and Computer Science and Information Systems Departments at AUK.