# Improving Question Embeddings with Cognitive Representation Optimization for Knowledge Tracing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.04121 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04121/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Towards an Appropriate Query, Key, and Value Computation for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07033/) (2020)
- [RKT : Relation-Aware Self-Attention for Knowledge Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12736/) (2020)
- [Knowledge Tracing with Sequential Key-Value Memory Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.13197/) (2019)
- [SAINT+: Integrating Temporal Features for EdNet Correctness Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12042/) (2020)
- [Improving Knowledge Tracing via Pre-training Question Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05031/) (2020)
- [Back to the Basics: Bayesian extensions of IRT outperform neural networks for proficiency estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02336/) (2016)
- [Last Query Transformer RNN for knowledge tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05038/) (2021)
- [Solving Expensive Optimization Problems in Dynamic Environments with Meta-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12538/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Designed to track changes in students' knowledge status and predict their future answers based on students' historical answer records. Current research on KT modeling focuses on predicting future student performance based on existing, unupdated records of student learning interactions. However, these methods ignore distractions in the response process (such as slipping and guessing) and ignore that static cognitive representations are temporary and limited. Most of them assume that there are no distractions during the answering process, and that the recorded representation fully represents the student's understanding and proficiency in knowledge. This can lead to many dissonant and uncoordinated issues in the original record. Therefore, we propose a knowledge-tracking cognitive representation optimization (CRO-KT) model that uses dynamic programming algorithms to optimize the structure of cognitive representation. This ensures that the structure matches the student's cognitive patterns in terms of practice difficulty. In addition, we use a synergistic optimization algorithm to optimize the cognitive representation of sub-target exercises based on the overall picture of exercise responses by considering all exercises with synergistic relationships as one goal. At the same time, the CRO-KT model integrates the relationship embedding learned in the dichotomous graph with the optimized record representation in a weighted manner, which enhances students' cognitive expression ability. Finally, experiments were conducted on three public datasets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed cognitive representation optimization model.