# A Self-Attentive model for Knowledge Tracing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.06837 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06837/

## Key facts

- Cited by 172 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 172)

- [Knowledge Tracing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06953/) (2022)
- [pyKT: A Python Library to Benchmark Deep Learning based Knowledge Tracing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11460/) (2022)
- [simpleKT: A Simple But Tough-to-Beat Baseline for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06881/) (2023)
- [Exploring Knowledge Tracing in Tutor-Student Dialogues using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16490/) (2024)
- [MathBERT: A Pre-trained Language Model for General NLP Tasks in Mathematics Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07340/) (2021)
- [Improving Interpretability of Deep Sequential Knowledge Tracing Models with Question-centric Cognitive Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06885/) (2023)
- [Agent4Edu: Generating Learner Response Data by Generative Agents for Intelligent Education Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10332/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Knowledge Tracing via Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04430/) (2021)
- [A Survey of Knowledge Tracing: Models, Variants, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15106/) (2021)
- [Enhancing Deep Knowledge Tracing with Auxiliary Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07942/) (2023)
- [Bringing Generative AI to Adaptive Learning in Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14601/) (2024)
- [Bi-CLKT: Bi-Graph Contrastive Learning based Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09020/) (2022)
- [Towards Modeling Learner Performance with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14661/) (2024)
- [Language Model Can Do Knowledge Tracing: Simple but Effective Method to Integrate Language Model and Knowledge Tracing Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02893/) (2024)
- [Adaptive and Personalized Exercise Generation for Online Language Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02457/) (2023)
- [Towards Robust Knowledge Tracing Models via k-Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17097/) (2024)
- [Deep Graph Memory Networks for Forgetting-Robust Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08105/) (2021)
- [CLST: Cold-Start Mitigation in Knowledge Tracing by Aligning a Generative Language Model as a Students' Knowledge Tracer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10296/) (2024)
- [Code-DKT: A Code-based Knowledge Tracing Model for Programming Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03545/) (2022)
- [Forgetting-aware Linear Bias for Attentive Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14796/) (2023)
- [Predictive, scalable and interpretable knowledge tracing on structured domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13179/) (2024)
- [Disentangled Knowledge Tracing for Alleviating Cognitive Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02539/) (2025)
- [Option Tracing: Beyond Correctness Analysis in Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09043/) (2021)
- [Automated Knowledge Concept Annotation and Question Representation Learning for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01727/) (2024)
- [SINKT: A Structure-Aware Inductive Knowledge Tracing Model with Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01245/) (2024)
- [Programming Knowledge Tracing: A Comprehensive Dataset and A New Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08273/) (2021)
- [DGEKT: A Dual Graph Ensemble Learning Method for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12881/) (2022)
- [Difficulty-Focused Contrastive Learning for Knowledge Tracing with a Large Language Model-Based Difficulty Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11890/) (2023)
- [3DG: A Framework for Using Generative AI for Handling Sparse Learner Performance Data From Intelligent Tutoring Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01746/) (2024)
- [No Task Left Behind: Multi-Task Learning of Knowledge Tracing and Option Tracing for Better Student Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14006/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Knowledge tracing is the task of modeling each student's mastery of knowledge concepts (KCs) as (s)he engages with a sequence of learning activities. Each student's knowledge is modeled by estimating the performance of the student on the learning activities. It is an important research area for providing a personalized learning platform to students. In recent years, methods based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) such as Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT) and Dynamic Key-Value Memory Network (DKVMN) outperformed all the traditional methods because of their ability to capture complex representation of human learning. However, these methods face the issue of not generalizing well while dealing with sparse data which is the case with real-world data as students interact with few KCs. In order to address this issue, we develop an approach that identifies the KCs from the student's past activities that are textitrelevant to the given KC and predicts his/her mastery based on the relatively few KCs that it picked. Since predictions are made based on relatively few past activities, it handles the data sparsity problem better than the methods based on RNN. For identifying the relevance between the KCs, we propose a self-attention based approach, Self Attentive Knowledge Tracing (SAKT). Extensive experimentation on a variety of real-world dataset shows that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art models for knowledge tracing, improving AUC by 4.43% on average.