@article{maniktala_chi_barnes_2022, title={Enhancing a student productivitymodel for adaptive problem-solving assistance}, ISSN={["1573-1391"]}, DOI={10.1007/s11257-022-09338-7}, abstractNote={Research on intelligent tutoring systems has been exploring data-driven methods to deliver effective adaptive assistance. While much work has been done to provide adaptive assistance when students seek help, they may not seek help optimally. This had led to the growing interest in proactive adaptive assistance, where the tutor provides unsolicited assistance upon predictions of struggle or unproductivity. Determining when and whether to provide personalized support is a well-known challenge called the assistance dilemma. Addressing this dilemma is particularly challenging in open-ended domains, where there can be several ways to solve problems. Researchers have explored methods to determine when to proactively help students, but few of these methods have taken prior hint usage into account. In this paper, we present a novel data-driven approach to incorporate students' hint usage in predicting their need for help. We explore its impact in an intelligent tutor that deals with the open-ended and well-structured domain of logic proofs. We present a controlled study to investigate the impact of an adaptive hint policy based on predictions of HelpNeed that incorporate students' hint usage. We show empirical evidence to support that such a policy can save students a significant amount of time in training and lead to improved posttest results, when compared to a control without proactive interventions. We also show that incorporating students' hint usage significantly improves the adaptive hint policy's efficacy in predicting students' HelpNeed, thereby reducing training unproductivity, reducing possible help avoidance, and increasing possible help appropriateness (a higher chance of receiving help when it was likely to be needed). We conclude with suggestions on the domains that can benefit from this approach as well as the requirements for adoption.}, journal={USER MODELING AND USER-ADAPTED INTERACTION}, author={Maniktala, Mehak and Chi, Min and Barnes, Tiffany}, year={2022}, month={Aug} }
 @article{ausin_maniktala_barnes_chi_2022, title={The Impact of Batch Deep Reinforcement Learning on Student Performance: A Simple Act of Explanation Can Go A Long Way}, ISSN={["1560-4306"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00312-3}, DOI={10.1007/s40593-022-00312-3}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION}, author={Ausin, Markel Sanz and Maniktala, Mehak and Barnes, Tiffany and Chi, Min}, year={2022}, month={Nov} }
 @article{ausin_maniktala_barnes_chi_2021, title={Tackling the Credit Assignment Problem in Reinforcement Learning-Induced Pedagogical Policies with Neural Networks}, volume={12748}, ISBN={["978-3-030-78291-7"]}, ISSN={["1611-3349"]}, url={https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78292-4_29}, DOI={10.1007/978-3-030-78292-4_29}, abstractNote={Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) provide a powerful tool for students to learn in an adaptive, personalized, and goal-oriented manner. In recent years, Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown to be capable of leveraging previous student data to induce effective pedagogical policies for future students. One of the most desirable goals of these policies is to maximize student learning gains while minimizing the training time. However, this metric is often not available until a student has completed the entire tutor. For this reason, the reinforcement signal of the effectiveness of the tutor is delayed. Assigning credit for each intermediate action based on a delayed reward is a challenging problem denoted the temporal Credit Assignment Problem (CAP). The CAP makes it difficult for most RL algorithms to assign credit to each action. In this work, we develop a general Neural Network-based algorithm that tackles the CAP by inferring immediate rewards from delayed rewards. We perform two empirical classroom studies, and the results show that this algorithm, in combination with a Deep RL agent, can improve student learning performance while reducing training time.}, journal={ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION (AIED 2021), PT I}, author={Ausin, Markel Sanz and Maniktala, Mehak and Barnes, Tiffany and Chi, Min}, year={2021}, pages={356–368} }
 @article{cody_maniktala_lytle_chi_barnes_2021, title={The Impact of Looking Further Ahead: A Comparison of Two Data-driven Unsolicited Hint Types on Performance in an Intelligent Data-driven Logic Tutor}, ISSN={["1560-4306"]}, DOI={10.1007/s40593-021-00237-3}, abstractNote={Research has shown assistance can provide many benefits to novices lacking the mental models needed for problem solving in a new domain. However, varying approaches to assistance, such as subgoals and next-step hints, have been implemented with mixed results. Next-Step hints are common in data-driven tutors due to their straightforward generation from historical student data, as well as research showing positive impacts on student learning. However, there is a lack of research exploring the possibility of extending data-driven methods to provide higher-level assistance. Therefore, we modified our data-driven Next-Step hint generator to provide Waypoints, hints that are a few steps ahead, representing problem-solving subgoals. We hypothesized that Waypoints would benefit students with high prior knowledge, and that Next-Step hints would most benefit students with lower prior knowledge. In this study, we investigated the influence of data-driven hint type, Waypoints versus Next-Step hints, on student learning in a logic proof tutoring system, Deep Thought, in a discrete mathematics course. We found that Next-Step hints were more beneficial for the majority of students in terms of time, efficiency, and accuracy on the posttest. However, higher totals of successfully used Waypoints were correlated with improvements in efficiency and time in the posttest. These results suggest that Waypoint hints could be beneficial, but more scaffolding may be needed to help students follow them.}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION}, author={Cody, Christa and Maniktala, Mehak and Lytle, Nicholas and Chi, Min and Barnes, Tiffany}, year={2021}, month={May} }
 @article{maniktala_cody_barnes_chi_2020, title={Avoiding Help Avoidance: Using Interface Design Changes to Promote Unsolicited Hint Usage in an Intelligent Tutor}, volume={30}, ISSN={["1560-4306"]}, DOI={10.1007/s40593-020-00213-3}, abstractNote={Within intelligent tutoring systems, considerable research has investigated hints, including how to generate data-driven hints, what hint content to present, and when to provide hints for optimal learning outcomes. However, less attention has been paid to how hints are presented. In this paper, we propose a new hint delivery mechanism called "Assertions" for providing unsolicited hints in a data-driven intelligent tutor. Assertions are partially-worked example steps designed to appear within a student workspace, and in the same format as student-derived steps, to show students a possible subgoal leading to the solution. We hypothesized that Assertions can help address the well-known hint avoidance problem. In systems that only provide hints upon request, hint avoidance results in students not receiving hints when they are needed. Our unsolicited Assertions do not seek to improve student help-seeking, but rather seek to ensure students receive the help they need. We contrast Assertions with Messages, text-based, unsolicited hints that appear after student inactivity. Our results show that Assertions significantly increase unsolicited hint usage compared to Messages. Further, they show a significant aptitude-treatment interaction between Assertions and prior proficiency, with Assertions leading students with low prior proficiency to generate shorter (more efficient) posttest solutions faster. We also present a clustering analysis that shows patterns of productive persistence among students with low prior knowledge when the tutor provides unsolicited help in the form of Assertions. Overall, this work provides encouraging evidence that hint presentation can significantly impact how students use them and using Assertions can be an effective way to address help avoidance.}, number={4}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION}, author={Maniktala, Mehak and Cody, Christa and Barnes, Tiffany and Chi, Min}, year={2020}, month={Nov}, pages={637–667} }
 @article{maniktala_cody_barnes_chi_2021, title={Avoiding Help Avoidance: Using Interface Design Changes to Promote Unsolicited Hint Usage in an Intelligent Tutor (September, 10.1007/s40593-020-00213-3, 2020)}, volume={31}, ISSN={["1560-4306"]}, DOI={10.1007/s40593-020-00232-0}, abstractNote={A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-020-00232-0}, number={1}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION}, author={Maniktala, Mehak and Cody, Christa and Barnes, Tiffany and Chi, Min}, year={2021}, month={Mar}, pages={154–155} }