IRT++: Improving Student Response Prediction With Gaussian Initialisation and Other Modifications

In this paper, we explore an extension of the Item Response Theory (IRT) model to predict student responses using dichotomous data and formulate approaches to improve the predictive accuracy of the traditional algorithm. We present a simple extension to the IRT modelling approach called IRT++, which combines both the 1-parameter and 2-parameter IRT models and modulates parameter optimisation through simple machine learning techniques like adaptive gradient descent and random-normal initialisation of parameters. By experimentation on real-world education data, we show how the IRT++ modelling framework other baselines at predicting student responses, and achieves better performance while sacrificing very little in model interpretability and rate of convergence.