FactMod is The First Workshop on Factorization Techniques for User Preference and Skill Modeling to be held at the UMAP 2012 conference in Montreal on July 16.

The workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the recommender and student modeling fields who are working on Matrix Factorization (MF) techniques. These techniques have gained a strong acceptance in the recommender systems field in the last few years, in good part due to their strong success and the visibility gained through the Netflix contest in 2009. They have recently been applied in the field of student skills modeling, also gaining strong success by matching the state of the art performance of well established approaches to predict student performance.

The aim of this event is to offer an opportunity to specifically focus on MF techniques and build bridges with the researchers working on user preference modeling from the recommender system community, and the researchers from the student skills modeling community. These two communities are central to the UMAP conference.

Submissions of original on-going works and previously unpublished research related to the Workshop topics are requested. We also welcome position and review papers that can have interest to an audience who want to learn more from the applications of the techniques within the two target fields.

The Workshop encompasses the following topics and their application for recommendation or student assessment purposes:
- Linear models of skills and preferences
- Factorization models
- Temporal dynamics
- Learning algorithms
- Factors selection
- Validation issues and experimental comparisons
- Assessment of uncertainty
- Ensemble models
- Applications

All submissions will be reviewed by at least two independent referees for relevance, originality, significance, validity and clarity. Papers will be reviewed by at least two independent referees.
Accepted research, industry and doctoral consortium papers will be published in the workshop proceedings and available on the workshop web site. We welcome the following types of contributions.
- Short (5 or 6 pages)
- Full (7 to 12 pages)

Important Dates:
3 May: abstract submission
13 May: deadline for paper submission
24 May: notification to authors
1 June: final version

Organization Committee:
- Michel C. Desmarais, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
- Neil Heffernan, Worchester Polytechnique Institute
- Tomáš Horváth, University of Hildesheim
- Thai-Nghe Nguyen, University of Hildesheim
- Zacharia Pardos, Worchester Polytechnique Institute