Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Also known as ITS

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Overview

Intelligent tutoring systems use evidence about a learner’s knowledge, progress, and behavior to choose what to teach and how much help to provide. Established approaches include Bayesian knowledge tracing, item response theory, knowledge graphs, and reinforcement learning for selecting problems, hints, or learning paths; newer systems add conversational language models, retrieval from course materials, and specialized agents. Researchers evaluate these systems with tutoring benchmarks, simulated learners, classroom studies, and measures such as mastery, engagement, and transfer to independent work. A central challenge is ensuring that fluent, correct responses are also pedagogically appropriate: systems can misdiagnose reasoning, reveal answers too soon, or perform well in simulations without producing durable learning gains.

Latest papers

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154 papers17 papers in the last four weeks, down 6% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. MC-CPO: Mastery-Conditioned Constrained Policy Optimization for Pedagogically Safe Intelligent Tutoring Systems

    Apr 5, 2026Oluseyi Olukola, Nick RahimiIntelligent Tutoring SystemsPolicy Learning

    School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg MS 39406 USA

  2. Policy-Governed LLM Routing with Intent Matching for Instrument Laboratories

    Apr 3, 2026Emmanuel A. Olowe, Danial ChitnisLLM RoutingAI in Education

    School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

  3. Hierarchical Apprenticeship Learning from Imperfect Demonstrations with Evolving Rewards

    Mar 31, 2026Md Mirajul Islam, Rajesh Debnath, Adittya Soukarjya Saha +1Learning from Suboptimal DemonstrationsLearning from Demonstration

    North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA

  4. From Domain Understanding to Design Readiness: a playbook for GenAI-supported learning in Software Engineering

    Mar 31, 2026Rafal WlodarskiAI in EducationGenerative AI in Education

    Electrical & Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA, USA

  5. Kwame 2.0: Human-in-the-Loop Generative AI Teaching Assistant for Large Scale Online Coding Education in Africa

    Mar 31, 2026George Boateng, Samuel Boateng, Victor KumbolGenerative AI in EducationIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    ETH Zurich, Switzerland · Kwame AI Inc., U.S. · Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

  6. REFINE: Real-world Exploration of Interactive Feedback and Student Behaviour

    Mar 31, 2026Fares Fawzi, Seyed Parsa Neshaei, Marta Knezevic +2Educational Feedback GenerationGenerative AI in Education

    EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

  7. Evaluating a Data-Driven Redesign Process for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

    Mar 31, 2026Qianru Lyu, Conrad Borchers, Meng Xia +4Mathematics EducationEducational Technology

    Carnegie Mellon University · Texas A&M University · Wellesley College

  8. SLOW: Strategic Logical-inference Open Workspace for Cognitive Adaptation in AI Tutoring

    Mar 30, 2026Yuang Wei, Ruijia Li, Bo JiangIntelligent Tutoring SystemsAI in Education

    Shanghai Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Education, Shanghai, China

  9. Instructor-Created Custom GPTs as Pedagogical Partners Fostering Immersion in Online Higher Education: Two Case Studies

    Mar 29, 2026Dennis Beck, Leonel MorgadoGenerative AI in EducationEducational Technology

    University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA · Universidade Aberta & INESC TEC, Lisbon & Porto, Portugal

  10. Heterogeneous Debate Engine: Identity-Grounded Cognitive Architecture for Resilient LLM-Based Ethical Tutoring

    Mar 28, 2026Jakub Masłowski, Jarosław A. ChudziakMulti-Agent DebateIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    Institute of Computer Science, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

  11. Listen, Correct, and Feed Back: Spoken Pedagogical Feedback Generation

    Mar 28, 2026Junhong Liang, Yifan Lu, Ekaterina Kochmar +1Computer-Assisted Language LearningEducational Feedback Generation

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE

  12. When Verification Hurts: Asymmetric Effects of Multi-Agent Feedback in Logic Proof Tutoring

    Mar 28, 2026Tahreem Yasir, Sutapa Dey Tithi, Benyamin Tabarsi +7Intelligent Tutoring SystemsLLM Evaluation

    DK · North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC, USA

  13. Evaluating adaptive and generative AI-based feedback and recommendations in a knowledge-graph-integrated programming learning system

    Mar 26, 2026Lalita Na Nongkhai, Jingyun Wang, Adam Wynn +1AI in EducationGenerative AI in Education

    Graduate School of Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan · Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham, UK

  14. Representation Learning to Study Temporal Dynamics in Tutorial Scaffolding

    Mar 25, 2026Conrad Borchers, Jiayi Zhang, Ashish GurungInstructional ScaffoldingSemantic Alignment

    Carnegie Mellon University · Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  15. Towards Reward Modeling for AI Tutors in Math Mistake Remediation

    Mar 25, 2026Kseniia Petukhova, Ekaterina KochmarReward ModelingIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

  16. ConceptKT: A Benchmark for Concept-Level Deficiency Prediction in Knowledge Tracing

    Mar 25, 2026Yu-Chen Kang, Yu-Chien Tang, An-Zi YenKnowledge TracingIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    Department of Computer Science, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

  17. From Untamed Black Box to Interpretable Pedagogical Orchestration: The Ensemble of Specialized LLMs Architecture for Adaptive Tutoring

    Mar 25, 2026Nizam KadirIntelligent Tutoring SystemsMulti-Agent LLM Systems

    Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore

  18. Decoding AI Tutor Effects for Educational Measurement: Temporal, Multi-Outcome, and Behavior-Cognitive Analysis

    Mar 22, 2026Yiyao Yang, Yasemin GulbaharIntelligent Tutoring SystemsUser Modeling

    Columbia University, New York, NY, United States

  19. From 50% to Mastery in 3 Days: A Low-Resource SOP for Localizing Graduate-Level AI Tutors via Shadow-RAG

    Mar 21, 2026Zonglin Yang, J. -H. Xie, Lining Zhang +2Generative AI in EducationIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    School of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China · Readraft Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., China · Graduate School of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China +1

  20. SafeTutors: Benchmarking Pedagogical Safety in AI Tutoring Systems

    Mar 18, 2026Rima Hazra, Bikram Ghuku, Ilona Marchenko +5Intelligent Tutoring SystemsAI Safety Evaluation

    Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands (TU/e) · Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur · Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv +3

  21. Assessing the Pedagogical Readiness of Large Language Models as AI Tutors in Low-Resource Contexts: A Case Study of Nepal's K-10 Curriculum

    Mar 17, 2026Pratyush Acharya, Prasansha Bharati, Yokibha Chapagain +2AI in EducationLLM Evaluation

  22. Facial-Expression-Aware Prompting for Empathetic LLM Tutoring

    Mar 10, 2026Shuangquan Feng, Laura Fleig, Ruisen Tu +6Intelligent Tutoring SystemsEmotion-Aware Dialogue Generation

    Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA · Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA +4

  23. Beyond Passive Viewing: A Pilot Study of a Hybrid Learning Platform Augmenting Video Lectures with Conversational AI

    Mar 10, 2026Mohammed Abraar, Raj Abhijit Dandekar, Rajat Dandekar +1Educational TechnologyAI in Education

    Vizuara AI Labs

  24. Data-Driven Hints in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

    Mar 7, 2026Sutapa Dey Tithi, Kimia Fazeli, Dmitri Droujkov +3Intelligent Tutoring SystemsGenerative AI in Education

    North Carolina State University, North Carolina, USA

  25. PACE: A Personalized Adaptive Curriculum Engine for 9-1-1 Call-taker Training

    Mar 5, 2026Zirong Chen, Hongchao Zhang, Meiyi MaPersonalized LearningAdaptive Learning

    College of Connected Computing, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA

  26. From Solver to Tutor: Evaluating the Pedagogical Intelligence of LLMs with KMP-Bench

    Mar 3, 2026Weikang Shi, Houxing Ren, Junting Pan +8Generative AI in EducationIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    Multimedia Laboratory (MMLab), The Chinese University of Hong Kong · CPII under InnoHK · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute

  27. The Aftermath of DrawEduMath: Vision Language Models Underperform with Struggling Students and Misdiagnose Errors

    Mar 1, 2026Li Lucy, Albert Zhang, Nathan Anderson +2AI in EducationVLM Evaluation

    University of Washington · Insource Services · Worcester Polytechnic Institute +1

  28. Can AI be a Teaching Partner? Evaluating ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek across Three Teaching Strategies

    Feb 24, 2026Talita de Paula Cypriano de Souza, Shruti Mehta, Matheus Arataque Uema +2AI in EducationGenerative AI in Education

    Federal Institute of São Paulo (IFSP), Major Fernando Valle Avenue, 2013 Braganca Paulista, 12903-000, SP, Brazil · Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences of University of São Paulo (USP), Trabalhador São-Carlense Avenue, 400 Sao Carlos, 13566-590, Sao Paulo, Brazil · Graduate School of Education of University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), 3700 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 Philadelphia, 610101, Pennsylvania, United States +1

  29. Chat-Based Support Alone May Not Be Enough: Comparing Conversational and Embedded LLM Feedback for Mathematical Proof Learning

    Feb 21, 2026Eason Chen, Sophia Judicke, Kayla Beigh +18AI in EducationIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA · The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

  30. ACE-TA: An Agentic Teaching Assistant for Grounded Q&A, Quiz Generation, and Code Tutoring

    Feb 20, 2026Himanshu Tripathi, Charlottee Crowell, Kaley Newlin +3Evidence-Grounded QAIntelligent Tutoring Systems

    University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA · Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA · Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, USA +1