PEARL is a framework that trains Socratic tutoring agents using pedagogically aligned reinforcement learning. It introduces a controllable student simulator to model diverse cognitive states, a reward model that jointly evaluates pedagogical quality and correctness, and a stable multi‑objective RL approach to balance competing tutoring goals. Experiments demonstrate that PEARL competes with both open‑source tutoring systems and leading proprietary LLMs.
By Qikai Chang, Zhenrong Zhang, Linbo Chen, Pengfei Hu, Jianshu Zhang, Youhui Guo, Jun Du
arXiv:2607. 04412v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) for non-verifiable instruction following increasingly relies on LLM judges with prompt-specific rubrics as reward signals.
By Yujin Kim, Namgyu Ho, Sangmin Hwang, Joonkee Kim, Yongjin Yang, Sangmin Bae, Seungone Kim, Jaehun Jung, Se-Young Yun, Hwanjun Song
arXiv:2609.01591v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: AI tutors are most useful when they adapt to each student's strengths, weaknesses, and preferred guidance, but evidence about which guidance works for...
By Ke Yang, Chenglong Wang, Michel Galley, Chandan Singh, Jeevana Priya Inala, ChengXiang Zhai, Jianfeng Gao
arXiv:2608. 03206v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) power educational applications from tutoring to essay scoring, but each is a point solution to a single task, and only recently have these point solutions been integrated into agents operating over a learning management system (LMS).
By Unggi Lee, Sookbun Lee, Yeil Jeong, Eunjoo Lee, Minchul Shin, Hoilym Kwon
AUSO (Action-level Unified Skill Optimization) is a method that unifies skill learning and skill use through a progressive, action-aware optimization process. It starts by jointly learning from teacher guidance and environmental outcomes, then shifts to outcome-based policy optimization, and finally evaluates each action under skill-conditioned and skill-free contexts to strengthen beneficial skill-sensitive actions while suppressing harmful ones. Experiments on ALFWorld, WebShop, and SearchQA demonstrate that AUSO consistently improves agent performance and out-of-distribution generalization compared to competitive baselines.
By Huizu Lin, Chengkai Huang, Tianqi Gao, Tao Huang, Daijiao Liu, Tongxin Li, Xiaoyan Sun, Lina Yao
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