Thuesday 5th of November at 14h a.m. Paris time, Nicolas Ringet, Ph.D. Candidate has defended his thesis named “Modeling, Exploration, and Explainable Co-construction of Lifelong Pathways”. His thesis defense took place at the IUT in Blois, France. Take a look at the summary below :
Summary
This thesis explores the mechanisms of personalized support systems, such as intelligent assistants and learning support systems. It focuses on the dynamic collaboration between beneficiaries and advisors for the co-construction of lifelong pathways, based on the analysis of life trajectories (health, education, etc.).
Current assistants are often limited to a specific domain and do not take into account the individual goals of beneficiaries. This thesis proposes two contributions to improve these systems.
Firstly, it presents a metamodel for the co-construction of lifelong pathways, explicating the interactions between beneficiaries and advisors, and illustrating its application in various sectors to facilitate the development of interoperable systems.
Secondly, it defines an approach for interactive data exploration inspired by evaluative AI, enabling more effective interaction with lifelong pathway data and a better understanding of possible decisions.
The contributions include a framework for hypothesis discovery, interaction operators, a multi-criteria optimization approach, and a new metric for the simplicity of explanations. The framework’s implementation is evaluated through comparative tests and a case study, demonstrating its feasibility and potential to democratize the co-construction of lifelong pathways.
The jury was composed of:
Examiners
- Pr. Marsala Christophe – Reviewer, University of Sorbonne
- Pr. Villanova-Oliver Marlène – Reviewer, University of Grenoble-Alpes
- Dr. Alignon Julien – Examiner, University of Toulouse Capitole
- Dr. Viard Tiphaine – Examiner, Télécom Paris
- Pr. Jean-Yves Antoine – Jury President, University of Tours
Supervisors :
- Pr. Labroche Nicolas – Director, University of Tours
- Pr. Marcel Patrick – Co-Director, University of Tours
- Pr. Devogele Thomas – Co-Director, University of Tours
Industrial perspectives
Berger-Levrault, particularly through its subsidiary Neolink, focuses on use cases related to the co-construction of lifelong pathways. Neolink, for instance, supports RSA beneficiaries by offering personalized guidance throughout their engagement with the program.
Meanwhile, Berger-Levrault’s main focus is on assisting elderly individuals in maintaining their autonomy at home.
The research in my thesis has resulted in the development of a metamodel that allows for the sharing of needs across these different use cases, helping to standardize the design of such tools. This metamodel facilitates the creation of interoperable solutions that address the distinct needs of each use case while maintaining a coherent approach to system design.
Moreover, the thesis has paved the way for more user-friendly and comprehensible diagnostic tools by introducing an automated hypothesis exploration approach, which enhances the clarity of decision-making processes. This enables both users and teams to better understand the underlying logic of the system, leading to more effective and personalized solutions tailored to specific use cases.
Scientific Publications:
(2021) About Challenges in Lifelong Pathways Recommendation: https://dblp.org/rec/conf/adbis/Ringuet21.html
(2021) About Chain Composite Item Recommender for Lifelong Pathways: https://dblp.org/rec/conf/dawak/ChansonDLMRT21.html
(2022) About Modeling Lifelong Pathway Co-construction: https://dblp.org/rec/conf/er/RinguetMLDB22
