{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/88089"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/88089","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Toward automatic generation of multiple-choice questions in an educational context","abstract":"Traditionally, textbooks often include thought-provoking questions at the beginning or at the end of a piece of text. These questions help readers to self-evaluate their comprehension of the text, and to reinforce their knowledge. The Internet has given people access to much more information than ever available before. With it, we also witness the blossom of educational websites and articles online. While the emergence of these websites and content themselves are great for child and adult learners alike, most of them are not accompanied by such reviewing questions traditionally available in textbooks. Without these questions, readers cannot easily assess their understanding, and forget what they learn in a shorter time span. This makes for a less satisfactory learning experience. It is impractical to generate such questions manually due to the sheer amount of articles available online. Therefore, we propose a method of generating these questions automatically without human intervention. We first select the most important sentences in an article. For each sentence, we automatically choose the most important phrase in it, and blank out that phrase. Finally, we attempt to create distracting answers for the phrase blanked out, making a multiple-choice question out of the sentence. We believe this is a step forward to creating a more enjoyable learning environment for life-long learners and all Internet users.","abstract_html":"Traditionally, textbooks often include thought-provoking questions at the beginning or at the end of a piece of text. These questions help readers to self-evaluate their comprehension of the text, and to reinforce their knowledge. The Internet has given people access to much more information than ever available before. With it, we also witness the blossom of educational websites and articles online. While the emergence of these websites and content themselves are great for child and adult learners alike, most of them are not accompanied by such reviewing questions traditionally available in textbooks. Without these questions, readers cannot easily assess their understanding, and forget what they learn in a shorter time span. This makes for a less satisfactory learning experience. It is impractical to generate such questions manually due to the sheer amount of articles available online. Therefore, we propose a method of generating these questions automatically without human intervention. We first select the most important sentences in an article. For each sentence, we automatically choose the most important phrase in it, and blank out that phrase. Finally, we attempt to create distracting answers for the phrase blanked out, making a multiple-choice question out of the sentence. We believe this is a step forward to creating a more enjoyable learning environment for life-long learners and all Internet users.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Kang, Zheng"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"M.S.","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Computer Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Zhai, ChengXiang"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2015,"date_issued":"2015-09-29T20:38:44Z","date_published":"2015-09-29T20:38:44Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:31Z","subjects":["automatic question generation"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2015 Zheng Kang"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88089","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Zhai, ChengXiang"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Kang, Zheng"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2015-09-29T20:38:44Z","2015-08","2015-07-20","2015-8"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Computer Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["M.S."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["automatic question generation"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2015 Zheng Kang"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88089"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Traditionally, textbooks often include thought-provoking questions at the beginning or at the end of a piece of text. These questions help readers to self-evaluate their comprehension of the text, and to reinforce their knowledge. The Internet has given people access to much more information than ever available before. With it, we also witness the blossom of educational websites and articles online. While the emergence of these websites and content themselves are great for child and adult learners alike, most of them are not accompanied by such reviewing questions traditionally available in textbooks. Without these questions, readers cannot easily assess their understanding, and forget what they learn in a shorter time span. This makes for a less satisfactory learning experience. It is impractical to generate such questions manually due to the sheer amount of articles available online. Therefore, we propose a method of generating these questions automatically without human intervention. We first select the most important sentences in an article. For each sentence, we automatically choose the most important phrase in it, and blank out that phrase. Finally, we attempt to create distracting answers for the phrase blanked out, making a multiple-choice question out of the sentence. We believe this is a step forward to creating a more enjoyable learning environment for life-long learners and all Internet users.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2015-09-29 without embargo terms","The student, Zheng Kang, accepted the attached license on 2015-07-20 at 11:43.","The student, Zheng Kang, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2015-07-20 at 11:48.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2015-07-20 at 12:54.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8562 on 2015-09-29 at 13:23:17","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-29T20:38:44Z (GMT). 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While the emergence of these websites and content themselves are great for child and adult learners alike, most of them are not accompanied by such reviewing questions traditionally available in textbooks. Without these questions, readers cannot easily assess their understanding, and forget what they learn in a shorter time span. This makes for a less satisfactory learning experience. It is impractical to generate such questions manually due to the sheer amount of articles available online. Therefore, we propose a method of generating these questions automatically without human intervention. We first select the most important sentences in an article. For each sentence, we automatically choose the most important phrase in it, and blank out that phrase. Finally, we attempt to create distracting answers for the phrase blanked out, making a multiple-choice question out of the sentence. We believe this is a step forward to creating a more enjoyable learning environment for life-long learners and all Internet users.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2015-09-29 without embargo terms","The student, Zheng Kang, accepted the attached license on 2015-07-20 at 11:43.","The student, Zheng Kang, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2015-07-20 at 11:48.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2015-07-20 at 12:54.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8562 on 2015-09-29 at 13:23:17","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-29T20:38:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 KANG-THESIS-2015.pdf: 211874 bytes, checksum: 806746b52ff2deabbc07c9c1fae01631 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4207 bytes, checksum: bc7cf477a99a33fef6b13454dbb1c66e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-20"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88089"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2015 Zheng Kang"],"dc:subject":["automatic question generation"],"dc:title":["Toward automatic generation of multiple-choice questions in an educational context"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Computer Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["M.S."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:31Z"}