A Learned Simulation Environment to Model Student Engagement and Retention in Automated Online Courses

We developed a simulator to quantify the effect of exercise ordering on both student engagement and retention. Our approach combines the construction of neural network representations for users and exercises using a dynamic matrix factorization method. We further created a machine learning models of success and dropout prediction. As a result, our system is able to predict student engagement and retention based on a given sequence of exercises selected. This opens the door to the development of versatile reinforcement learning agents which can substitute the role of private tutoring in exam preparation.

A Learned Simulation Environment to Model Plant Growth in Indoor Farming

We developed a simulator to quantify the effect of changes in environmental parameters on plant growth in precision farming. Our approach combines the processing of plant images with deep convolutional neural networks (CNN), growth curve modeling, and machine learning. As a result, our system is able to predict growth rates based on environmental variables, which opens the door for the development of versatile reinforcement learning agents.