Bootstrapped Learning Analysis and Curriculum Development Environment (BLADE)
Abstract
DARPA's Bootstrapped Learning (BL) program was a research effort to build and evaluate an electronic learner (e-student) that can be instructed by a human in the style of human-mentored learning. The BAE Systems' team was responsible for evaluation, curriculum construction, and instructional mechanisms of the BL program. An independent Learning Team was responsible for the machine learning (ML) algorithms. This report presents BAE Systems' results in developing instructional materials to test the e-student, evaluating the e-student's learning results against control human subjects, and developing instructional techniques and mechanisms to teach the e-student. Overall program results demonstrate that natural instruction is a powerful and concise alternative to typical instructional input provided to current ML systems; they also point to the feasibility of constructing individual learning methods that can take advantage of multiple types of instructional input. In the future, we recommend focusing on learning and performance in a specific domain (e.g., ISR analysis) as it would (1) provide the opportunity to overcome the limitations discussed in this report, (2) stretch the bootstrapping approach to an extended training regimen (extended over both time and conceptual coverage), and (3) provide the opportunity to assess success in a concrete domain with specific success criteria.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA558695
Entities
People
- Dan Hunter
- Howard Reubenstein
- Kathy Ryall
Organizations
- BAE Systems