Educational querying processing based on detected course enrollment and course-relevant query time

摘要

Techniques can construct a learner's educational context (e.g., course enrollments, subject-matter interests, and/or activity involvements) and tailor query processing using the educational context. For a given query, each concept in a set of concepts can be assigned a weight. The weight can depend on a query term in the query. For example, for a query including “North America”, a “geography” concept and a “history” concept can be determined to be related to the query, and weights can be influenced accordingly. Weights can also depend on a user's educational context (e.g., such that the “geography” weight is higher when a learner is enrolled in a geography course). A query time can also be analyzed in view of schedule data (e.g., indicating when particular topics are to be studied in a course). Weights can further depend on which concepts are recently, currently or will soon be of interest based on the schedule.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for using educational contexts for learners to adjust processing of search queries in a learner-specific manner, the method comprising:
accessing an educational-context data store that identifies, for each learner of a set of learners, a course that the learner is enrolled in, the course being associated with a syllabus; receiving a search query entered by a learner of the set of learners via an interface at an input time, the search query including a query term; searching the educational-context data store to identify the syllabus associated with the course that the learner is enrolled in; identifying a portion of the syllabus corresponding to the input time; determining a weight for a concept based on:
the query term;the course that the learner is identified as being enrolled in; andthe portion of the syllabus; identifying a content object in a set of content objects based on the determined weight for the concept; and generating a query result that identifies the content object as being responsive to the query.