# CLST: Cold-Start Mitigation in Knowledge Tracing by Aligning a Generative Language Model as a Students' Knowledge Tracer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10296 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10296/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1310.4546/) (2013)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [Deep Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.05908/) (2015)
- [Context-Aware Attentive Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.12324/) (2020)
- [A Self-Attentive model for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06837/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Key-Value Memory Networks for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08108/) (2016)
- [A Study of Generative Large Language Model for Medical Research and Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13523/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models in Medicine: Progress, Application, and Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05112/) (2023)
- [Large Models for Time Series and Spatio-Temporal Data: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10196/) (2023)
- [EKT: Exercise-aware Knowledge Tracing for Student Performance Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05658/) (2019)
- [Knowledge Tracing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06953/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models for Generative Recommendation: A Survey and Visionary Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01157/) (2023)
- [Instructions and Guide for Diagnostic Questions: The NeurIPS 2020 Education Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.12061/) (2020)
- [RKT : Relation-Aware Self-Attention for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12736/) (2020)
- [Geometry-Aware Symmetric Domain Adaptation for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01870/) (2019)
- [Knowledge Tracing with Sequential Key-Value Memory Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.13197/) (2019)
- [Addressing Two Problems in Deep Knowledge Tracing via Prediction-Consistent Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02180/) (2018)
- [pyKT: A Python Library to Benchmark Deep Learning based Knowledge Tracing Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11460/) (2022)
- [Knowledge Tracing Machines: Factorization Machines for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03388/) (2018)
- [Improving Knowledge Tracing via Pre-training Question Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05031/) (2020)
- [A Survey of Knowledge Tracing: Models, Variants, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15106/) (2021)
- [GPT-3-driven pedagogical agents for training children's curious question-asking skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14228/) (2022)
- [Towards Modeling Learner Performance with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14661/) (2024)
- [Harnessing LLMs in Curricular Design: Using GPT-4 to Support Authoring of Learning Objectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17459/) (2023)
- [HGKT: Introducing Hierarchical Exercise Graph for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16915/) (2020)
- [Multi-Factors Aware Dual-Attentional Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04741/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Exploring Knowledge Tracing in Tutor-Student Dialogues using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16490/) (2024)
- [Classroom Simulacra: Building Contextual Student Generative Agents in Online Education for Learning Behavioral Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02780/) (2025)
- [Position: LLMs Can be Good Tutors in English Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05467/) (2025)
- [Cold Start Problem: An Experimental Study of Knowledge Tracing Models with New Students](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21517/) (2025)
- [Next Token Knowledge Tracing: Exploiting Pretrained LLM Representations to Decode Student Behaviour](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02599/) (2025)
- [FoundationalASSIST: An Educational Dataset for Foundational Knowledge Tracing and Pedagogical Grounding of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00070/) (2026)
- [A Training-Free Large Reasoning Model-based Knowledge Tracing Framework for Unified Prediction and Prescription](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01708/) (2026)
- [Not All Options Are Created Equal: Textual Option Weighting for Token-Efficient LLM-Based Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12872/) (2024)
- [From Prediction to Application: Language Model-based Code Knowledge Tracing with Domain Adaptive Pre-Training and Automatic Feedback System with Pedagogical Prompting for Comprehensive Programming Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00323/) (2024)
- [Pedagogy-R1: Pedagogically-Aligned Reasoning Model with Balanced Educational Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18467/) (2025)
- [HISE-KT: Synergizing Heterogeneous Information Networks and LLMs for Explainable Knowledge Tracing with Meta-Path Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15191/) (2025)
- [Is Passive Expertise-Based Personalization Enough? A Case Study in AI-Assisted Test-Taking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23376/) (2025)
- [LiveGraph: Active-Structure Neural Re-ranking for Exercise Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17036/) (2026)
- [MAML-KT: Addressing Cold Start Problem in Knowledge Tracing for New Students via Few-Shot Model-Agnostic Meta Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00137/) (2026)
- [RAG-KT: Cross-platform Explainable Knowledge Tracing with Multi-view Fusion Retrieval Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10960/) (2026)
- [From Mastery Profile to Simulated Response: Stochastic Student Knowledge Graphs (SSKG) for Faithful LLM Student Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21668/) (2026)
- [TutorLoop: Regulating Student Learning Behaviors via Sensor-in-the-Loop Generative Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09400/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Knowledge tracing (KT), wherein students' problem-solving histories are used to estimate their current levels of knowledge, has attracted significant interest from researchers. However, most existing KT models were developed with an ID-based paradigm, which exhibits limitations in cold-start performance. These limitations can be mitigated by leveraging the vast quantities of external knowledge possessed by generative large language models (LLMs). In this study, we propose cold-start mitigation in knowledge tracing by aligning a generative language model as a students' knowledge tracer (CLST) as a framework that utilizes a generative LLM as a knowledge tracer. Upon collecting data from math, social studies, and science subjects, we framed the KT task as a natural language processing task, wherein problem-solving data are expressed in natural language, and fine-tuned the generative LLM using the formatted KT dataset. Subsequently, we evaluated the performance of the CLST in situations of data scarcity using various baseline models for comparison. The results indicate that the CLST significantly enhanced performance with a dataset of fewer than 100 students in terms of prediction, reliability, and cross-domain generalization.