Bibliographic record
Abstract
Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques comprise all methods for human language comprehension by machines and Large Language Models (LLMs) are generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that are used for NLP tasks. An important aspect of LLMs are word embeddings, a way of representing text in numerical form such that words and phrases can be mathematically compared. The purpose of this review paper is to consider the existing research on word embeddings in an engineering education context and discuss future applications. After a brief explanation of the technology, a literature review details current uses in education. Of the 96 papers identified in a literature search, 13 are discussed further which highlight the use of word embeddings for applications like summarization and qualitative analysis. Finally, other potential applications are identified and discussed including knowledge-based assessments and syllabus analysis. The work suggests that applying embeddings as a method is similar in all contexts, showcasing this technology as a potentially multi-use method the engineering education community can implement for future work both in pedagogical settings and potential research projects.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".