Natural Language Processing and Language Understanding in Educational Research

This course offers an overview of natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) for educational practitioners, leaders, and researchers. This class introduces analysis of and analytical tools for research work with unstructured data such as student writing, responses to learner surveys, interview data, or transcripts from an educational setting.

Topics will include an overview of:

• examples of unstructured data in educational settings;
• research problems and questions that can be addressed with natural language data and tools;
• tools and techniques for preparation and analysis of unstructured educational data.

Course participants will also complete short applied assignments with unstructured data.

Week 1: Common NLP Research Questions and Tools in Learning Analytics 

Week 2: Data Cleaning and Analysis Concepts in NLP

Week 3: Concepts and Emerging Tools for NLU