Visualization of Curriculum on LDA and Isomap

Abstract

A curriculum is crucial to maintaining the integrity of various courses of universities, and an effort to improve a curriculum may include an analysis of the curriculum by comparing the curriculum with previous curricula or curricula of other universities. However, reading syllabi of each curriculum and comparing those curricula is too labor-intensive. We have been developing a method to project syllabi on a map by latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and Isomap for the comparison of curricula embodied by the syllabi. In this research, we applied our method to analyzing curricula offered by information science-related departments. The result of analysis of the maps showed that our curriculum maps reflected characteristics of each department.