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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bhattacharjee, Indronil, Wayllace, Christabel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21517
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author Bhattacharjee, Indronil
Wayllace, Christabel
author_facet Bhattacharjee, Indronil
Wayllace, Christabel
contents KnowledgeTracing (KT) involves predicting students' knowledge states based on their interactions with Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). A key challenge is the cold start problem, accurately predicting knowledge for new students with minimal interaction data. Unlike prior work, which typically trains KT models on initial interactions of all students and tests on their subsequent interactions, our approach trains models solely using historical data from past students, evaluating their performance exclusively on entirely new students. We investigate cold start effects across three KT models: Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT), Dynamic Key-Value Memory Networks (DKVMN), and Self-Attentive Knowledge Tracing (SAKT), using ASSISTments 2009, 2015, and 2017 datasets. Results indicate all models initially struggle under cold start conditions but progressively improve with more interactions; SAKT shows higher initial accuracy yet still faces limitations. These findings highlight the need for KT models that effectively generalize to new learners, emphasizing the importance of developing models robust in few-shot and zero-shot learning scenarios
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_21517
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cold Start Problem: An Experimental Study of Knowledge Tracing Models with New Students
Bhattacharjee, Indronil
Wayllace, Christabel
Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
KnowledgeTracing (KT) involves predicting students' knowledge states based on their interactions with Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). A key challenge is the cold start problem, accurately predicting knowledge for new students with minimal interaction data. Unlike prior work, which typically trains KT models on initial interactions of all students and tests on their subsequent interactions, our approach trains models solely using historical data from past students, evaluating their performance exclusively on entirely new students. We investigate cold start effects across three KT models: Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT), Dynamic Key-Value Memory Networks (DKVMN), and Self-Attentive Knowledge Tracing (SAKT), using ASSISTments 2009, 2015, and 2017 datasets. Results indicate all models initially struggle under cold start conditions but progressively improve with more interactions; SAKT shows higher initial accuracy yet still faces limitations. These findings highlight the need for KT models that effectively generalize to new learners, emphasizing the importance of developing models robust in few-shot and zero-shot learning scenarios
title Cold Start Problem: An Experimental Study of Knowledge Tracing Models with New Students
topic Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21517