Problems and Prospects for the Application of Neural Networks for the Sphere of Education

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to examine the theory and practice of using neural networks in education, to develop the concept of a neural network adaptive learning environment, and to implement a neural network model of one of the subsystems of this environment (using a model example of creating an adaptive educational trajectory).Materials and methods. The study includes a review of bibliographic sources on the application of neural networks in the field of education. It also includes modeling the structure of a neural network adaptive learning environment. The PyTorch library was used to programmatically implement the neural network.Results. The prospects for the use of neural networks in the field of education are considered, including various tasks of recognition, diagnostics, classification, clustering, forecasting, optimization, etc. A structural model of an adaptive learning NeuroSmart environment is created. This environment includes a number of subsystems for solving the following tasks: biometric identification of the student; determining starting level; choosing an adaptive learning path; determining the current level of competency development; automated verification of students’ work using recognition technology; analysis of the final result of training; monitoring information security incidents in an electronic course, etc. In order to study the possibilities and problems of applying neural network models to the tasks of constructing student adaptive learning trajectories, a model example of a neural network was created. This example illustrates the possibility of using a neural network to select further nodes of the educational trajectory based on the available data on the current learning parameters in an electronic course. To implement the neural network, the PyTorch deep learning library and Pandas library modules were used. SGD, Adam, Rprop were used as an optimizer to perform gradient descent steps. For each of the optimizers, a computer study of the stability of the neural network was carried out by varying the following parameters: the learning rate coefficient, the number of neurons in the hidden layer, and the number of training epochs.Conclusion. It can be assumed that the next stage in the evolution of the use of neural network technologies in the field of education will be their integration into complex multi-component Smart systems capable of automatically supporting student learning at all stages of the implementation of their personal educational trajectory. Obviously, the practical implementation of complex neural network systems of this level is a very difficult task and can be solved so far only at the level of individual subsystems. There are a number of problems associated with computer simulation of the educational environment based on neural network models: the question of the optimal structure of the neural network (for example, the number of neurons and layers in the network) has not been studied enough, there are no clear criteria for the optimality of the adaptive educational trajectory. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the task of developing new forms and technologies of personalized e-learning is in great demand, which makes modeling based on neural networks especially relevant.

Keywords

• neural networks
• education
• individual educational trajectory
• electronic course
• adaptive learning