RL Techniques for Modeling Students
Another approach involves employing RL to simulate the behavior of the student as opposed to the teacher. In this approach, the RL agent is the student, and the teacher represents the environment. This type of modeling is useful in an open-ended learning field where tasks are sequential, open-ended, and conceptual. Hence, this RL model can be used to diagnose students’ mistakes and build an effective feedback environment [1,2]. Also, a student was used as a model to evaluate teaching methods. Similarly, the research work in [3] used students as RL agents to study the foundations of teaching for the purpose of sequential decision making. See also [4].
Example:
An example for modeling students is policy teaching when the student is used as an RL agent, see [4].
Reference:
[1] Rafferty, A.N.; Ying, H.; Williams, J.J. Bandit assignment for educational experiments: Benefits to students versus statistical power. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, London, UK, 27–30 June 2018; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2018; pp. 286–290.
[2] Yang, X.; Zhou, G.; Taub, M.; Azevedo, R.; Chi, M. Student Subtyping via EM-Inverse Reinforcement Learning. Int. Educ. Data Min. Soc. 2020, 269–279.
[3] Zhu, X.; Singla, A.; Zilles, S.; Rafferty, A.N. An overview of machine teaching. arXiv 2018, arXiv:1801.05927.
[4] Fahad Mon, B.; Wasfi, A.; Hayajneh, M.; Slim, A.; Abu Ali, N. Reinforcement Learning in Education: A Literature Review. Informatics 2023, 10, 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics10030074
[2] Yang, X.; Zhou, G.; Taub, M.; Azevedo, R.; Chi, M. Student Subtyping via EM-Inverse Reinforcement Learning. Int. Educ. Data Min. Soc. 2020, 269–279.
[3] Zhu, X.; Singla, A.; Zilles, S.; Rafferty, A.N. An overview of machine teaching. arXiv 2018, arXiv:1801.05927.
[4] Fahad Mon, B.; Wasfi, A.; Hayajneh, M.; Slim, A.; Abu Ali, N. Reinforcement Learning in Education: A Literature Review. Informatics 2023, 10, 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics10030074
Author of the tip:
Ivo Nowak
HAW Hamburg