arXiv AI

Methodologies for Improving the Quality of AI Tutoring in K-12 Education

arXiv:2608. 11259v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many AI tutors leverage large language models (LLMs) today.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 25

LLM Pedagogical Behavior in AI Tutoring Interactions

arXiv:2608.22993v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Students increasingly use LLMs as tutors for coursework and problem solving. Little is known about the level of assistance LLMs provide when students u...

By Suhyeon Lee, Juneha Baek, Jaehyeong Park, Donghyuk Shin
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning

The paper presents a tutoring platform that combines a generative AI chatbot with a reinforcement learning algorithm to adaptively sequence practice problems for students learning Python. In a five‑month field study across ten high schools, the adaptive sequencing improved unassisted final exam performance by 0.15 standard deviations, with mediation analysis indicating that higher engagement drove the gains. The study demonstrates that signals from student‑chatbot interactions can be leveraged to personalize and optimize learning at scale.

By Angel Tsai-Hsuan Chung, Botong Zhang, Ling-Chieh Kung, Hamsa Bastani, Osbert Bastani
arXiv AI
Aug 28

TutorTrace: A Dataset and Taxonomy for Classifying Learner Behavioral States during AI-Assisted Programming Education

TutorTrace is a new dataset and behavioral abstraction pipeline that captures learners’ low‑level IDE telemetry to make their behavioral context visible and computable in real time. The dataset, collected across 480 students in two introductory Python courses, includes 180 K telemetry events, 13 633 behavioral segments, and 27 continuously computed metrics, and it underpins a taxonomy of learner activity before, between, and after AI queries. Preliminary classroom tests show that behavior‑aware prompts reduce the time between queries, and the system can predict upcoming queries with AUROC scores of .726 and .717 on two held‑out tasks.

By David Barron, Xiaohang Tang, Rezky Dwisantika, Minsun Kim, David H. Smith IV, Jiaming Cui, Yan Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

Simulating Disengaged Students to Evaluate LLM-based Tutors

The paper introduces Disengagement-Aware Student Simulators (DAS2), a protocol that models five learner-engagement states—engaged, gaming, wheel-spinning, off-task, and mixed—to evaluate AI tutor performance before deployment. Using annotated tutoring sessions from ASSISTments09, DAS2’s rule-based labels matched human consensus in 81% of cases, and conditioning simulations on intended states narrowed the correctness-rate gap between simulated and authentic sessions for gaming and wheel-spinning behaviors. The study also compares five AI tutors across these states, finding stable relative rankings but state-specific performance differences, and notes that automated evaluation does not fully align with human judgment.

By Xianghui Meng, Jionghao Lin
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 15

Learning Engagement Assistant (LEA): Cross-Course Scalability and Classroom Evaluation of an Agentic AI Tutoring System

This paper is an extension of a paper presented at the ICAART 2026 conference, which introduced LEA (Learning Engagement Assistant), an adaptive AI tutoring agent combining course-specific Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with structured Knowledge Component (KC) models across integrated Chat, Tutor, and Quiz modes. That prior work validated LEA on a single STEM course (CMP511) exclusively through simulation, using synthetic learner agents.

arXiv AI
Sep 4

A Prompt-Engineering Approach to Develop Scalable, Flexible, and Real-Time Hybrid Micro-Level Personalization in a General Purpose AI Teaching Assistant

The paper introduces a prompt‑engineering framework that personalizes large language model (LLM) teaching assistants across disciplines by tailoring responses to six learner‑specific dimensions, creating 96 distinct learner profiles. It also analyzes student queries through Bloom’s Taxonomy to gauge cognitive complexity, encoding both learner attributes and cognitive assessments into structured prompts that condition the LLM without retraining. Experiments using NLP metrics and a small human study demonstrate that this approach yields perceptible differences in response style and structure, with statistical evidence linking specific learner attributes to measurable changes.

By Saptarshi Basu, Sandeep Kakar, Ashok Goel
arXiv AI
Jul 16

Learning Engagement Assistant (LEA): Cross-Course Scalability and Classroom Evaluation of an Agentic AI Tutoring System

arXiv:2607. 13370v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper is an extension of a paper presented at the ICAART 2026 conference, which introduced LEA (Learning Engagement Assistant), an adaptive AI tutoring agent combining course-specific Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with structured Knowledge Component (KC) models across integrated Chat, Tutor, and Quiz modes.

By Teri Rumble, Javad Zarrin, P. George Lovell, Ruth Falconer