arXiv:2607. 21612v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Parameter-efficient fine-tuning methods like LoRA have become the default for adapting large language models, succeeding across instruction following, style transfer, and factual adaptation.
By Simon Dennis, Kevin Shabahang, Hao Guo, Rivaan Patil
arXiv:2606. 06546v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Evaluating large language models (LLMs) for education requires measuring how models teach, not only what they know.
By Tao Liu, Ye Lu, Ruohua Zhang, Siyu Song, Wentao Liu, Aimin Zhou, Hao Hao
MemToC is a controlled benchmark that tests how large language models resolve conflicts between their internal memory and tool outputs. It contains 6,504 episodes built from 542 factual questions, each paired with a model‑generated closed‑book answer and a tool return whose correctness is known, creating four distinct source‑correctness scenarios. Across five 7‑9B open‑weight models, tool responses overwhelmingly dominate closed‑book answers, and only a minority of instruction‑tuned models correctly retain a verified answer when the tool is wrong, while most follow a correct tool or repeat a wrong tool.
By Arseniy Varlamov, Rishat Zinnatullin, Elisei Rykov, Alexander Panchenko, Ilseyar Alimova
AI University (AI‑U) is a flexible framework that uses a fine‑tuned large language model (LLM) combined with retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) and a reasoning synthesis model to produce style‑aligned responses from lecture videos, notes, and textbooks. In a graduate‑level finite‑element‑method (FEM) course, the authors created a pipeline to generate course‑grounded training data, fine‑tuned an open‑source LLM with Low‑Rank Adaptation (LoRA), and applied RAG‑based synthesis. Evaluation through cosine similarity, LLM‑based assessment, expert review, and user studies showed that the expert model outperformed the base model in alignment with course materials, with 86 % of test cases scoring higher and human users preferring the expert model roughly twice as often.
whyItMatters":"The study demonstrates a practical method for building course‑specific learning assistants that improve alignment with instructional content, offering a template that can be extended across STEM fields."
By Mostafa Faghih Shojaei, Rahul Gulati, Benjamin A. Jasperson, Shangshang Wang, Simone Cimolato, Manas Vardhan, Dangli Cao, Willie Neiswanger, Krishna Garikipati
arXiv:2607. 05571v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models are increasingly explored as AI tutors, yet deploying them in K-12 settings raises concerns around privacy, cost, and reliance on proprietary models.
By H. Chad Lane, Bryson Kageler
arXiv:2606. 31048v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper investigates knowledge distillation from a large reasoning model (DeepSeek-R1) to a compact student model (Qwen2.
By Gaurab Baral, Aaditya Khanal, Yangyang Tao, Junxiu Zhou