arXiv subjects

Aimin Zhou

Publications and source records attributed to Aimin Zhou.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2026

Embedding Enhancement via Fine-Tuned Language Models for Learner-Item Cognitive Modeling

Learner-item cognitive modeling plays a central role in the web-based online intelligent education system by enabling cognitive diagnosis (CD) across diverse online educational scenarios. Although ID embedding remains the mainstream approach in cognitive modeling due to its effectiveness and flexibility, recent advances in language models (LMs) have introduced new possibilities for incorporating rich semantic representations to enhance CD performance. This highlights the need for a comprehensive analysis of how LMs enhance embeddings through semantic integration across mainstream CD tasks. This paper identifies two key challenges in fully leveraging LMs in existing work: Misalignment between the training objectives of LMs and CD models creates a distribution gap in feature spaces; A unified framework is essential for integrating textual embeddings across varied CD tasks while preserving the strengths of existing cognitive modeling paradigms to ensure the robustness of embedding enhancement. To address these challenges, this paper introduces EduEmbed, a unified embedding enhancement framework that leverages fine-tuned LMs to enrich learner-item cognitive modeling across diverse CD tasks. EduEmbed operates in two stages. In the first stage, we fine-tune LMs based on role-specific representations and an interaction diagnoser to bridge the semantic gap of CD models. In the second stage, we employ a textual adapter to extract task-relevant semantics and integrate them with existing modeling paradigms to improve generalization. We evaluate the proposed framework on four CD tasks and computerized adaptive testing (CAT) task, achieving robust performance. Further analysis reveals the impact of semantic information across diverse tasks, offering key insights for future research on the application of LMs in CD for online intelligent education systems.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Automating Skill Acquisition through Large-Scale Mining of Open-Source Agentic Repositories: A Framework for Multi-Agent Procedural Knowledge Extraction

The transition from monolithic large language models (LLMs) to modular, skill-equipped agents represents a fundamental architectural shift in artificial intelligence deployment. While general-purpose models demonstrate remarkable breadth in declarative knowledge, their utility in autonomous workflows is frequently constrained by insufficient specialized procedural expertise. This report investigates a systematic framework for automated acquisition of high-quality agent skills through mining of open-source repositories on platforms such as GitHub. We focus on the extraction of visualization and educational capabilities from state-of-the-art systems including TheoremExplainAgent and Code2Video, both utilizing the Manim mathematical animation engine. The framework encompasses repository structural analysis, semantic skill identification through dense retrieval, and translation to the standardized SKILL.md format. We demonstrate that systematic extraction from agentic repositories, combined with rigorous security governance and multi-dimensional evaluation metrics, enables scalable acquisition of procedural knowledge that augments LLM capabilities without requiring model retraining. Our analysis reveals that agent-generated educational content can achieve 40\% gains in knowledge transfer efficiency while maintaining pedagogical quality comparable to human-crafted tutorials.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

Scaling Laws for Educational AI Agents

While scaling laws for Large Language Models (LLMs) have been extensively studied along dimensions of model parameters, training data, and compute, the scaling behavior of LLM-based educational agents remains unexplored. We propose that educational agent capability scales not merely with the underlying model size, but through structured dimensions that we collectively term the Agent Scaling Law: role definition clarity, skill depth, tool completeness, runtime capability, and educator expertise injection. Central to this framework is AgentProfile, a structured JSON-based specification that serves as the mechanism enabling systematic capability growth of educational agents. We present EduClaw, a profile-driven multi-agent platform that operationalizes this scaling law, demonstrating its effectiveness through the construction and deployment of 330+ educational agent profiles encompassing 1,100+ skill modules across K-12 subjects. Our empirical observations suggest that educational agent performance scales predictably with profile structural richness. We identify two complementary scaling axes -- Tool Scaling and Skill Scaling -- as future directions, arguing that the path to more capable educational AI lies not solely in larger models, but in stronger structured capability systems.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

See and Remember: A Multimodal Agent for Web Traversal

Autonomous web navigation requires agents to perceive complex visual environments and maintain long-term context, yet current Large Language Model (LLM) based agents often struggle with spatial disorientation and navigation loops. In this paper, we propose generally applicable V-GEMS(Visual Grounding and Explicit Memory System), a robust multimodal agent architecture designed for precise and resilient web traversal. Our agent integrates visual grounding to resolve ambiguous interactive elements and introduces an explicit memory stack with state tracking. This dual mechanism allows the agent to maintain a structured map of its traversal path, enabling valid backtracking and preventing cyclical failures in deep navigation tasks. We also introduce an updatable dynamic benchmark to rigorously evaluate adaptability. Experiments show V-GEMS significantly dominates the WebWalker baseline, achieving a substantial 28.7% performance gain. Code is available at https://github.com/Vaultttttttttttt/V-GEMS.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

EduResearchBench: A Hierarchical Atomic Task Decomposition Benchmark for Full-Lifecycle Educational Research

While Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping the paradigm of AI for Social Science (AI4SS), rigorously evaluating their capabilities in scholarly writing remains a major challenge. Existing benchmarks largely emphasize single-shot, monolithic generation and thus lack the fine-grained assessments required to reflect complex academic research workflows. To fill this gap, we introduce EduResearchBench, the first comprehensive evaluation platform dedicated to educational academic writing. EduResearchBench is built upon our Hierarchical Atomic Task Decomposition (HATD) framework, which decomposes an end-to-end research workflow into six specialized research modules (e.g., Quantitative Analysis, Qualitative Research, and Policy Research) spanning 24 fine-grained atomic tasks. This taxonomy enables an automated evaluation pipeline that mitigates a key limitation of holistic scoring, where aggregate scores often obscure specific capability bottlenecks, and instead provides fine-grained, diagnostic feedback on concrete deficiencies. Moreover, recognizing the high cognitive load inherent in scholarly writing, we propose a curriculum learning strategy that progressively builds competence from foundational skills to complex methodological reasoning and argumentation. Leveraging 55K raw academic samples, we curate 11K high-quality instruction pairs to train EduWrite, a specialized educational scholarly writing model. Experiments show that EduWrite (30B) substantially outperforms larger general-purpose models (72B) on multiple core metrics, demonstrating that in vertical domains, data quality density and hierarchically staged training curricula are more decisive than parameter scale.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

IB-GRPO: Aligning LLM-based Learning Path Recommendation with Educational Objectives via Indicator-Based Group Relative Policy Optimization

Learning Path Recommendation (LPR) aims to generate personalized sequences of learning items that maximize long-term learning effect while respecting pedagogical principles and operational constraints. Although large language models (LLMs) offer rich semantic understanding for free-form recommendation, applying them to long-horizon LPR is challenging due to (i) misalignment with pedagogical objectives such as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) under sparse, delayed feedback, (ii) scarce and costly expert demonstrations, and (iii) multi-objective interactions among learning effect, difficulty scheduling, length controllability, and trajectory diversity. To address these issues, we propose IB-GRPO (Indicator-Based Group Relative Policy Optimization), an indicator-guided alignment approach for LLM-based LPR. To mitigate data scarcity, we construct hybrid expert demonstrations via Genetic Algorithm search and teacher RL agents and warm-start the LLM with supervised fine-tuning. Building on this warm-start, we design a within-session ZPD alignment score for difficulty scheduling. IB-GRPO then uses the $I_{ε+}$ dominance indicator to compute group-relative advantages over multiple objectives, avoiding manual scalarization and improving Pareto trade-offs. Experiments on ASSIST09 and Junyi using the KES simulator with a Qwen2.5-7B backbone show consistent improvements over representative RL and LLM baselines.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Epitome: Pioneering an Experimental Platform for AI-Social Science Integration

Large Language Models (LLMs) enable unprecedented social science experimentation by creating controlled hybrid human-AI environments. We introduce Epitome (www.epitome-ai.com), an open experimental platform that operationalizes this paradigm through Matrix-like social worlds where researchers can study isolated human subjects and groups interacting with LLM agents. This maintains ecological validity while enabling precise manipulation of social dynamics. Epitome approaches three frontiers: (1) methodological innovation using LLM confederates to reduce complexity while scaling interactions; (2) empirical investigation of human behavior in AI-saturated environments; and (3) exploration of emergent properties in hybrid collectives. Drawing on interdisciplinary foundations from management, communication, sociology, psychology, and ethics, the platform's modular architecture spans foundation model deployment through data collection. We validate Epitome through replication of three seminal experiments, demonstrating capacity to generate robust findings while reducing experimental complexity. This tool provides crucial insights for understanding how humans navigate AI-mediated social realities, knowledge essential for policy, education, and human-centered AI design.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning based AI tutor for Socratic Interdisciplinary Instruction

Cultivating higher-order cognitive abilities -- such as knowledge integration, critical thinking, and creativity -- in modern STEM education necessitates a pedagogical shift from passive knowledge transmission to active Socratic construction. Although Large Language Models (LLMs) hold promise for STEM Interdisciplinary education, current methodologies employing Prompt Engineering (PE), Supervised Fine-tuning (SFT), or standard Reinforcement Learning (RL) often fall short of supporting this paradigm. Existing methods are hindered by three fundamental challenges: the inability to dynamically model latent student cognitive states; severe reward sparsity and delay inherent in long-term educational goals; and a tendency toward policy collapse lacking strategic diversity due to reliance on behavioral cloning. Recognizing the unobservability and dynamic complexity of these interactions, we formalize the Socratic Interdisciplinary Instructional Problem (SIIP) as a structured Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), demanding simultaneous global exploration and fine-grained policy refinement. To this end, we propose ERL4SIIP, a novel Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (ERL) framework specifically tailored for this domain. ERL4SIIP integrates: (1) a dynamic student simulator grounded in a STEM knowledge graph for latent state modeling; (2) a Hierarchical Reward Mechanism that decomposes long-horizon goals into dense signals; and (3) a LoRA-Division based optimization strategy coupling evolutionary algorithms for population-level global search with PPO for local gradient ascent.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

AutoSynth: Automated Workflow Optimization for High-Quality Synthetic Dataset Generation via Monte Carlo Tree Search

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) of large language models (LLMs) for specialized tasks requires high-quality datasets, but manual curation is prohibitively expensive. Synthetic data generation offers scalability, but its effectiveness relies on complex, multi-stage workflows, integrating prompt engineering and model orchestration. Existing automated workflow methods face a cold start problem: they require labeled datasets for reward modeling, which is especially problematic for subjective, open-ended tasks with no objective ground truth. We introduce AutoSynth, a framework that automates workflow discovery and optimization without reference datasets by reframing the problem as a Monte Carlo Tree Search guided by a novel dataset-free hybrid reward. This reward enables meta-learning through two LLM-as-judge components: one evaluates sample quality using dynamically generated task-specific metrics, and another assesses workflow code and prompt quality. Experiments on subjective educational tasks show that while expert-designed workflows achieve higher human preference rates (96-99% win rates vs. AutoSynth's 40-51%), models trained on AutoSynth-generated data dramatically outperform baselines (40-51% vs. 2-5%) and match or surpass expert workflows on certain metrics, suggesting discovery of quality dimensions beyond human intuition. These results are achieved while reducing human effort from 5-7 hours to just 30 minutes (>90% reduction). AutoSynth tackles the cold start issue in data-centric AI, offering a scalable, cost-effective method for subjective LLM tasks. Code: https://github.com/bisz9918-maker/AutoSynth.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

OmniEduBench: A Comprehensive Chinese Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models in Education

With the rapid development of large language models (LLMs), various LLM-based works have been widely applied in educational fields. However, most existing LLMs and their benchmarks focus primarily on the knowledge dimension, largely neglecting the evaluation of cultivation capabilities that are essential for real-world educational scenarios. Additionally, current benchmarks are often limited to a single subject or question type, lacking sufficient diversity. This issue is particularly prominent within the Chinese context. To address this gap, we introduce OmniEduBench, a comprehensive Chinese educational benchmark. OmniEduBench consists of 24.602K high-quality question-answer pairs. The data is meticulously divided into two core dimensions: the knowledge dimension and the cultivation dimension, which contain 18.121K and 6.481K entries, respectively. Each dimension is further subdivided into 6 fine-grained categories, covering a total of 61 different subjects (41 in the knowledge and 20 in the cultivation). Furthermore, the dataset features a rich variety of question formats, including 11 common exam question types, providing a solid foundation for comprehensively evaluating LLMs' capabilities in education. Extensive experiments on 11 mainstream open-source and closed-source LLMs reveal a clear performance gap. In the knowledge dimension, only Gemini-2.5 Pro surpassed 60\% accuracy, while in the cultivation dimension, the best-performing model, QWQ, still trailed human intelligence by nearly 30\%. These results highlight the substantial room for improvement and underscore the challenges of applying LLMs in education.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

EA4LLM: A Gradient-Free Approach to Large Language Model Optimization via Evolutionary Algorithms

In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have made remarkable progress, with model optimization primarily relying on gradient-based optimizers such as Adam. However, these gradient-based methods impose stringent hardware requirements, demanding high-concurrency, high-memory GPUs. Moreover, they require all neural network operations to be differentiable, thereby excluding many promising non-differentiable architectures from practical use. To address these limitations, we propose EA4LLM, an evolutionary algorithm for optimizing LLMs, and, for the first time, empirically verify full-parameter optimization from the pretraining stage across model sizes ranging from 0.5B to 32B. We conduct extensive experiments and provide key insights into how evolutionary algorithms can effectively optimize neural networks. Our work challenges the prevailing assumption that gradient-based optimization is the only viable approach for training neural networks. It also holds significant potential to reduce the computational cost of training large language models, thereby enabling groups with limited computational resources to participate in deep learning research.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Copy-Augmented Representation for Structure Invariant Template-Free Retrosynthesis

Retrosynthesis prediction is fundamental to drug discovery and chemical synthesis, requiring the identification of reactants that can produce a target molecule. Current template-free methods struggle to capture the structural invariance inherent in chemical reactions, where substantial molecular scaffolds remain unchanged, leading to unnecessarily large search spaces and reduced prediction accuracy. We introduce C-SMILES, a novel molecular representation that decomposes traditional SMILES into element-token pairs with five special tokens, effectively minimizing editing distance between reactants and products. Building upon this representation, we incorporate a copy-augmented mechanism that dynamically determines whether to generate new tokens or preserve unchanged molecular fragments from the product. Our approach integrates SMILES alignment guidance to enhance attention consistency with ground-truth atom mappings, enabling more chemically coherent predictions. Comprehensive evaluation on USPTO-50K and large-scale USPTO-FULL datasets demonstrates significant improvements: 67.2% top-1 accuracy on USPTO-50K and 50.8% on USPTO-FULL, with 99.9% validity in generated molecules. This work establishes a new paradigm for structure-aware molecular generation with direct applications in computational drug discovery.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

DiaCBT: A Long-Periodic Dialogue Corpus Guided by Cognitive Conceptualization Diagram for CBT-based Psychological Counseling

Psychotherapy reaches only a small fraction of individuals suffering from mental disorders due to social stigma and the limited availability of therapists. Large language models (LLMs), when equipped with professional psychotherapeutic skills, offer a promising solution to expand access to mental health services. However, the lack of psychological conversation datasets presents significant challenges in developing effective psychotherapy-guided conversational agents. In this paper, we construct a long-periodic dialogue corpus for counseling based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Our curated dataset includes multiple sessions for each counseling and incorporates cognitive conceptualization diagrams (CCDs) to guide client simulation across diverse scenarios. To evaluate the utility of our dataset, we train an in-depth counseling model and present a comprehensive evaluation framework to benchmark it against established psychological criteria for CBT-based counseling. Results demonstrate that DiaCBT effectively enhances LLMs' ability to emulate psychologists with CBT expertise, underscoring its potential for training more professional counseling agents.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Enhancing Depression-Diagnosis-Oriented Chat with Psychological State Tracking

Depression-diagnosis-oriented chat aims to guide patients in self-expression to collect key symptoms for depression detection. Recent work focuses on combining task-oriented dialogue and chitchat to simulate the interview-based depression diagnosis. Whereas, these methods can not well capture the changing information, feelings, or symptoms of the patient during dialogues. Moreover, no explicit framework has been explored to guide the dialogue, which results in some useless communications that affect the experience. In this paper, we propose to integrate Psychological State Tracking (POST) within the large language model (LLM) to explicitly guide depression-diagnosis-oriented chat. Specifically, the state is adapted from a psychological theoretical model, which consists of four components, namely Stage, Information, Summary and Next. We fine-tune an LLM model to generate the dynamic psychological state, which is further used to assist response generation at each turn to simulate the psychiatrist. Experimental results on the existing benchmark show that our proposed method boosts the performance of all subtasks in depression-diagnosis-oriented chat.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

SID: Benchmarking Guided Instruction Capabilities in STEM Education with a Socratic Interdisciplinary Dialogues Dataset

Fostering students' abilities for knowledge integration and transfer in complex problem-solving scenarios is a core objective of modern education, and interdisciplinary STEM is a key pathway to achieve this, yet it requires expert guidance that is difficult to scale. While LLMs offer potential in this regard, their true capability for guided instruction remains unclear due to the lack of an effective evaluation benchmark. To address this, we introduce SID, the first benchmark designed to systematically evaluate the higher-order guidance capabilities of LLMs in multi-turn, interdisciplinary Socratic dialogues. Our contributions include a large-scale dataset of 10,000 dialogue turns across 48 complex STEM projects, a novel annotation schema for capturing deep pedagogical features, and a new suite of evaluation metrics (e.g., X-SRG). Baseline experiments confirm that even state-of-the-art LLMs struggle to execute effective guided dialogues that lead students to achieve knowledge integration and transfer. This highlights the critical value of our benchmark in driving the development of more pedagogically-aware LLMs.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

ELMES: An Automated Framework for Evaluating Large Language Models in Educational Scenarios

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) presents transformative opportunities for education, generating numerous novel application scenarios. However, significant challenges remain: evaluation metrics vary substantially across different educational scenarios, while many emerging scenarios lack appropriate assessment metrics. Current benchmarks predominantly measure general intelligence rather than pedagogical capabilities. To address this gap, we introduce ELMES, an open-source automated evaluation framework specifically designed for assessing LLMs in educational settings. ELMES features a modular architecture that enables researchers to create dynamic, multi-agent dialogues through simple configuration files, facilitating flexible scenario design without requiring extensive programming expertise. The framework incorporates a hybrid evaluation engine that objectively quantifies traditionally subjective pedagogical metrics using an LLM-as-a-Judge methodology. We conduct systematic benchmarking of state-of-the-art LLMs across four critical educational scenarios: Knowledge Point Explanation, Guided Problem-Solving Teaching, Interdisciplinary Lesson Plan Generation, and Contextualized Question Generation, employing fine-grained metrics developed in collaboration with education specialists. Our results demonstrate distinct capability distributions among models, revealing context-specific strengths and limitations. ELMES provides educators and researchers with an accessible evaluation framework that significantly reduces adaptation barriers for diverse educational applications while advancing the practical implementation of LLMs in pedagogy. The framework is publicly available at \emph{https://github.com/sii-research/elmes.git}.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

A Large Language Model for Chemistry and Retrosynthesis Predictions

Large language models (LLM) have achieved impressive progress across a broad range of general-purpose tasks, but their effectiveness in chemistry remains limited due to scarce domain-specific datasets and the demand for precise symbolic and structural reasoning. Here we introduce ECNU-ChemGPT(name after East China Normal University), a chemistry-specialized LLM engineered for deep chemical knowledge understanding and accurate retrosynthetic route planning. Our approach is distinguished by four key strategies: structured prompt-based knowledge distillation from authoritative chemistry textbooks to construct a high-quality question-answering dataset; domain-specific prompt engineering using curated chemical keywords, combined with LLMs APIs for data derivation and knowledge distillation; large-scale fine-tuning on a meticulously cleaned and enriched Pistachio reaction dataset to enhance retrosynthesis prediction accuracy; and integration of BrainGPT, a dynamic multi-model scheduling framework that enables task-specific invocation of multiple specialized models trained for diverse chemistry-related tasks. ECNU-ChemGPT exhibits superior performance on chemistry question-answering and retrosynthetic planning benchmarks, outperforming leading general-purpose models-including Deepseek-R1, Qwen-2.5, and GPT-4o. In retrosynthesis, it achieves a Top-1 accuracy of 68.3% on the USPTO_50K dataset and successfully reconstructed 13 complete experimental pathways for real-world drug molecules from medicinal chemistry journals. These results underscore the effectiveness of domain-adapted fine-tuning combined with dynamic multi-model task scheduling, providing a scalable and robust solution for chemical knowledge question answering and retrosynthetic planning.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

The Role of Visual Modality in Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning: Challenges and Insights

Recent research has increasingly focused on multimodal mathematical reasoning, particularly emphasizing the creation of relevant datasets and benchmarks. Despite this, the role of visual information in reasoning has been underexplored. Our findings show that existing multimodal mathematical models minimally leverage visual information, and model performance remains largely unaffected by changes to or removal of images in the dataset. We attribute this to the dominance of textual information and answer options that inadvertently guide the model to correct answers. To improve evaluation methods, we introduce the HC-M3D dataset, specifically designed to require image reliance for problem-solving and to challenge models with similar, yet distinct, images that change the correct answer. In testing leading models, their failure to detect these subtle visual differences suggests limitations in current visual perception capabilities. Additionally, we observe that the common approach of improving general VQA capabilities by combining various types of image encoders does not contribute to math reasoning performance. This finding also presents a challenge to enhancing visual reliance during math reasoning. Our benchmark and code would be available at \href{https://github.com/Yufang-Liu/visual_modality_role}{https://github.com/Yufang-Liu/visual\_modality\_role}.

cs.CV↗