Automatic Question Generation (Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies)

This book provides an overview of the fundamentals of Automatic Question Generation (AQG) for computational linguistics researchers, test developers, and educators. The author presents a variety of AQG system architectures, including generating questions from syntactic analyses, semantic resources, neural architectures, ontologies and knowledge graphs, and large language models. The advantages and pitfalls of a variety of AQG evaluation methods, including multi-aspect ratings by human experts, end-users, as well as crowd-sourcing and automatic evaluation techniques are discussed. The book also provides a roadmap of options for AQG targeted orientation, content selection, and focusing decisions. Machine learning opportunities for training systems to generate questions based on human-generated examples are also explored. This book offers greater depth and breadth than previous surveys of AQG. Readers will gain a comprehensive knowledge of current research, examples of applications of AQG, and inspiration for future directions for innovation and application.