# Problem-Oriented Segmentation and Retrieval: Case Study on Tutoring Conversations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.07598 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07598/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [ColBERT: Efficient and Effective Passage Search via Contextualized Late Interaction over BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12832/) (2020)
- [ColBERTv2: Effective and Efficient Retrieval via Lightweight Late Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01488/) (2021)
- [Multi-View Sequence-to-Sequence Models with Conversational Structure for Abstractive Dialogue Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01672/) (2020)
- [Edu-ConvoKit: An Open-Source Library for Education Conversation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05111/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SegNSP: Revisiting Next Sentence Prediction for Linear Text Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03474/) (2026)
- [Codebook-Injected Dialogue Segmentation for Multi-Utterance Constructs Annotation: LLM-Assisted and Gold-Label-Free Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12061/) (2026)
- [You Know What I Mean: A Benchmark for Agentic Conversational Reference Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29834/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Many open-ended conversations (e.g., tutoring lessons or business meetings) revolve around pre-defined reference materials, like worksheets or meeting bullets. To provide a framework for studying such conversation structure, we introduce Problem-Oriented Segmentation & Retrieval (POSR), the task of jointly breaking down conversations into segments and linking each segment to the relevant reference item. As a case study, we apply POSR to education where effectively structuring lessons around problems is critical yet difficult. We present LessonLink, the first dataset of real-world tutoring lessons, featuring 3,500 segments, spanning 24,300 minutes of instruction and linked to 116 SAT math problems. We define and evaluate several joint and independent approaches for POSR, including segmentation (e.g., TextTiling), retrieval (e.g., ColBERT), and large language models (LLMs) methods. Our results highlight that modeling POSR as one joint task is essential: POSR methods outperform independent segmentation and retrieval pipelines by up to +76% on joint metrics and surpass traditional segmentation methods by up to +78% on segmentation metrics. We demonstrate POSR's practical impact on downstream education applications, deriving new insights on the language and time use in real-world lesson structures.