arXiv subjects

Dragan Gašević

Publications and source records attributed to Dragan Gašević.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2026

Not All Students Engage Alike: Multi-Institution Patterns in GenAI Tutor Use

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created unprecedented opportunities to provide individualized learning support in classrooms as automated tutoring systems at scale. However, concerns have been raised that students may engage with these tools in ways that do not support learning. Moreover, student engagement with GenAI Tutors may vary across instructional contexts, potentially leading to unequal learning experiences. In this study, we utilize de-identified student interaction logs from an existing GenAI Tutor and the learning management system in which it is embedded. We systematically examined student engagement (N = 11,406) with the tool across 200 classes in ten post-secondary institutions through a two-stage pipeline: First, we identified four distinct engagement types at the conversation session level. In particular, 10.4% of them were "shallow engagement" where copy-pasting behavior was prevalent. Then, at the student level, we show that students transitioned across engagement types over time. However, students who exhibited shallow engagement with the tool were more likely to remain in this mode, whereas those who engaged deeply with the tool transitioned more flexibly across engagement types. Finally, at both the session and student levels, we show substantial heterogeneity in student engagement across institution selectivity and course disciplines. In particular, students from highly selective institutions were more likely to exhibit deep engagement. Together, our study advances the understanding of how GenAI Tutors are used in authentic educational settings and provides a framework for analyzing student engagement with GenAI Tutors, with implications for responsible implementation at scale.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

Fifteen Years of Learning Analytics Research: Topics, Trends, and Challenges

The learning analytics (LA) community has recently reached two important milestones: celebrating the 15th LAK conference and updating the 2011 definition of LA to reflect the 15 years of changes in the discipline. However, despite LA's growth, little is known about how research topics, funding, and collaboration, as well as the relationships among them, have developed within the community over time. This study addressed this gap by analyzing all 936 full and short papers published at LAK over a 15-year period using unsupervised machine learning, natural language processing, and network analytics. The analysis revealed a stable core of prolific authors alongside high turnover of newcomers, systematic links between funding sources and research directions, and six enduring topical centers that remain globally shared but vary in prominence across countries. These six topical centers, which encompass LA research, are: self-regulated learning, dashboards and theory, social learning, automated feedback, multimodal analytics, and outcome prediction. Our findings highlight key challenges for the future: widening participation, reducing dependency on a narrow set of funders, and ensuring that emerging research trajectories remain responsive to educational practice and societal needs.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

When LLMs fall short in Deductive Coding: Model Comparison and Human AI Collaboration Workflow Design

With generative artificial intelligence driving the growth of dialogic data in education, automated coding is a promising direction for learning analytics to improve efficiency. This surge highlights the need to understand the nuances of student-AI interactions, especially those rare yet crucial. However, automated coding may struggle to capture these rare codes due to imbalanced data, while human coding remains time-consuming and labour-intensive. The current study examined the potential of large language models (LLMs) to approximate or replace humans in deductive, theory-driven coding, while also exploring how human-AI collaboration might support such coding tasks at scale. We compared the coding performance of small transformer classifiers (e.g., BERT) and LLMs in two datasets, with particular attention to imbalanced head-tail distributions in dialogue codes. Our results showed that LLMs did not outperform BERT-based models and exhibited systematic errors and biases in deductive coding tasks. We designed and evaluated a human-AI collaborative workflow that improved coding efficiency while maintaining coding reliability. Our findings reveal both the limitations of LLMs -- especially their difficulties with semantic similarity and theoretical interpretations and the indispensable role of human judgment -- while demonstrating the practical promise of human-AI collaborative workflows for coding.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

The Social Blindspot in Human-AI Collaboration: How Undetected AI Personas Reshape Team Dynamics

As generative AI systems become increasingly embedded in collaborative work, they are evolving from visible tools into human-like communicative actors that participate socially rather than merely providing information. Yet little is known about how such agents shape team dynamics when their artificial nature is not recognised, a growing concern as human-like AI is deployed at scale in education, organisations, and civic contexts where collaboration underpins collective outcomes. In a large-scale mixed-design experiment (N = 905), we examined how AI teammates with distinct communicative personas, supportive or contrarian, affected collaboration across analytical, creative, and ethical tasks. Participants worked in triads that were fully human or hybrid human-AI teams, without being informed of AI involvement. Results show that participants had limited ability to detect AI teammates, yet AI personas exerted robust social effects. Contrarian personas reduced psychological safety and discussion quality, whereas supportive personas improved discussion quality without affecting safety. These effects persisted after accounting for individual differences in detectability, revealing a dissociation between influence and awareness that we term the social blindspot. Linguistic analyses confirmed that personas were enacted through systematic differences in affective and relational language, with partial mediation for discussion quality but largely direct effects on psychological safety. Together, the findings demonstrate that AI systems can tacitly regulate collaborative norms through persona-level cues, even when users remain unaware of their presence. We argue that persona design constitutes a form of social governance in hybrid teams, with implications for the responsible deployment of AI in collective settings.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

FLoRA: An Advanced AI-Powered Engine to Facilitate Hybrid Human-AI Regulated Learning

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL), defined as learners' ability to systematically plan, monitor, and regulate their learning activities, is crucial for sustained academic achievement and lifelong learning competencies. Emerging AI developments profoundly influence SRL interactions by potentially either diminishing or strengthening learners' opportunities to exercise their own regulatory skills. Recent literature emphasizes a balanced approach termed Hybrid Human-AI Regulated Learning (HHAIRL), in which AI provides targeted, timely scaffolding while preserving the learners' role as active decision-makers and reflective monitors of their learning process. Central to HHAIRL is the integration of adaptive and personalized learning systems; by modelling each learner's knowledge and self-regulation patterns, AI can deliver contextually relevant scaffolds that support learners during all phases of the SRL process. Nevertheless, existing digital tools frequently fall short, lacking adaptability and personalisation, focusing narrowly on isolated SRL phases, and insufficiently supporting meaningful human-AI interactions. In response, this paper introduces the enhanced FLoRA Engine, which incorporates advanced generative AI features and state-of-the-art learning analytics, and grounds in solid educational theories. The FLoRA Engine offers tools such as collaborative writing, multi-agent chatbots, and detailed learning trace logging to support dynamic, adaptive scaffolding of self-regulation tailored to individual needs in real time. We further present a summary of several research studies that provide the validations for and illustrate how these tools can be utilized in real-world educational and experimental contexts. These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of FLoRA Engine in fostering SRL, providing both theoretical insights and practical solutions for the future of AI-enhanced learning contexts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Directive, Metacognitive or a Blend of Both? A Comparison of AI-Generated Feedback Types on Student Engagement, Confidence, and Outcomes

Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on student learning, with extensive research examining how best to implement it in educational settings. Increasingly, feedback is being generated by artificial intelligence (AI), offering scalable and adaptive responses. Two widely studied approaches are directive feedback, which gives explicit explanations and reduces cognitive load to speed up learning, and metacognitive feedback which prompts learners to reflect, track their progress, and develop self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. While both approaches have clear theoretical advantages, their comparative effects on engagement, confidence, and quality of work remain underexplored. This study presents a semester-long randomised controlled trial with 329 students in an introductory design and programming course using an adaptive educational platform. Participants were assigned to receive directive, metacognitive, or hybrid AI-generated feedback that blended elements of both directive and metacognitive feedback. Results showed that revision behaviour differed across feedback conditions, with Hybrid prompting the most revisions compared to Directive and Metacognitive. Confidence ratings were uniformly high, and resource quality outcomes were comparable across conditions. These findings highlight the promise of AI in delivering feedback that balances clarity with reflection. Hybrid approaches, in particular, show potential to combine actionable guidance for immediate improvement with opportunities for self-reflection and metacognitive growth.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Agentic AI as Undercover Teammates: Argumentative Knowledge Construction in Hybrid Human-AI Collaborative Learning

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) agents are increasingly embedded in collaborative learning environments, yet their impact on the processes of argumentative knowledge construction remains insufficiently understood. Emerging conceptualisations of agentic AI and artificial agency suggest that such systems possess bounded autonomy, interactivity, and adaptability, allowing them to engage as epistemic participants rather than mere instructional tools. Building on this theoretical foundation, the present study investigates how agentic AI, designed as undercover teammates with either supportive or contrarian personas, shapes the epistemic and social dynamics of collaborative reasoning. Drawing on Weinberger and Fischer's (2006) four-dimensional framework, participation, epistemic reasoning, argument structure, and social modes of co-construction, we analysed synchronous discourse data from 212 human and 64 AI participants (92 triads) engaged in an analytical problem-solving task. Mixed-effects and epistemic network analyses revealed that AI teammates maintained balanced participation but substantially reorganised epistemic and social processes: supportive personas promoted conceptual integration and consensus-oriented reasoning, whereas contrarian personas provoked critical elaboration and conflict-driven negotiation. Epistemic adequacy, rather than participation volume, predicted individual learning gains, indicating that agentic AI's educational value lies in enhancing the quality and coordination of reasoning rather than amplifying discourse quantity. These findings extend CSCL theory by conceptualising agentic AI as epistemic and social participants, bounded yet adaptive collaborators that redistribute cognitive and argumentative labour in hybrid human-AI learning environments.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Towards Reliable Generative AI-Driven Scaffolding: Reducing Hallucinations and Enhancing Quality in Self-Regulated Learning Support

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) holds a potential to advance existing educational technologies with capabilities to automatically generate personalised scaffolds that support students' self-regulated learning (SRL). While advancements in large language models (LLMs) promise improvements in the adaptability and quality of educational technologies for SRL, there remain concerns about the hallucinations in content generated by LLMs, which can compromise both the learning experience and ethical standards. To address these challenges, we proposed GenAI-enabled approaches for evaluating personalised SRL scaffolds before they are presented to students, aiming for reducing hallucinations and improving the overall quality of LLM-generated personalised scaffolds. Specifically, two approaches are investigated. The first approach involved developing a multi-agent system approach for reliability evaluation to assess the extent to which LLM-generated scaffolds accurately target relevant SRL processes. The second approach utilised the "LLM-as-a-Judge" technique for quality evaluation that evaluates LLM-generated scaffolds for their helpfulness in supporting students. We constructed evaluation datasets, and compared our results with single-agent LLM systems and machine learning approach baselines. Our findings indicate that the reliability evaluation approach is highly effective and outperforms the baselines, showing almost perfect alignment with human experts' evaluations. Moreover, both proposed evaluation approaches can be harnessed to effectively reduce hallucinations. Additionally, we identified and discussed bias limitations of the "LLM-as-a-Judge" technique in evaluating LLM-generated scaffolds. We suggest incorporating these approaches into GenAI-powered personalised SRL scaffolding systems to mitigate hallucination issues and improve the overall scaffolding quality.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Beyond Self-Regulated Learning Processes: Unveiling Hidden Tactics in Generative AI-Assisted Writing

The integration of Generative AI (GenAI) into education is reshaping how students learn, making self-regulated learning (SRL) - the ability to plan, monitor, and adapt one's learning - more important than ever. To support learners in these new contexts, it is essential to understand how SRL unfolds during interaction with GenAI tools. Learning analytics offers powerful techniques for analyzing digital trace data to infer SRL behaviors. However, existing approaches often assume SRL processes are linear, segmented, and non-overlapping-assumptions that overlook the dynamic, recursive, and non-linear nature of real-world learning. We address this by conceptualizing SRL as a layered system: observable learning patterns reflect hidden tactics (short, purposeful action states), which combine into broader SRL strategies. Using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), we analyzed trace data from higher education students engaged in GenAI-assisted academic writing. We identified three distinct groups of learners, each characterized by different SRL strategies. These groups showed significant differences in performance, indicating that students' use of different SRL strategies in GenAI-assisted writing led to varying task outcomes. Our findings advance the methodological toolkit for modeling SRL and inform the design of adaptive learning technologies that more effectively support learners in GenAI-enhanced educational environments.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Where is AIED Headed? Key Topics and Emerging Frontiers (2020-2024)

In this study, we analyze 2,398 research articles published between 2020 and 2024 across eight core venues related to the field of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED). Using a three-step knowledge co-occurrence network analysis, we analyze the knowledge structure of the field, the evolving knowledge clusters, and the emerging frontiers. Our findings reveal that AIED research remains strongly technically focused, with sustained themes such as intelligent tutoring systems, learning analytics, and natural language processing, alongside rising interest in large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). By tracking the bridging keywords over the past five years, we identify four emerging frontiers in AIED--LLMs, GenAI, multimodal learning analytics, and human-AI collaboration. The current research interests in GenAI are centered around GAI-driven personalization, self-regulated learning, feedback, assessment, motivation, and ethics.The key research interests and emerging frontiers in AIED reflect a growing emphasis on co-adaptive, human-centered AI for education. This study provides the first large-scale field-level mapping of AIED's transformation in the GenAI era and sheds light on the future research development and educational practices.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2025

Does the Prompt-based Large Language Model Recognize Students' Demographics and Introduce Bias in Essay Scoring?

Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used in Automated Essay Scoring (AES) due to their ability to capture semantic meaning. Traditional fine-tuning approaches required technical expertise, limiting accessibility for educators with limited technical backgrounds. However, prompt-based tools like ChatGPT have made AES more accessible, enabling educators to obtain machine-generated scores using natural-language prompts (i.e., the prompt-based paradigm). Despite advancements, prior studies have shown bias in fine-tuned LLMs, particularly against disadvantaged groups. It remains unclear whether such biases persist or are amplified in the prompt-based paradigm with cutting-edge tools. Since such biases are believed to stem from the demographic information embedded in pre-trained models (i.e., the ability of LLMs' text embeddings to predict demographic attributes), this study explores the relationship between the model's predictive power of students' demographic attributes based on their written works and its predictive bias in the scoring task in the prompt-based paradigm. Using a publicly available dataset of over 25,000 students' argumentative essays, we designed prompts to elicit demographic inferences (i.e., gender, first-language background) from GPT-4o and assessed fairness in automated scoring. Then we conducted multivariate regression analysis to explore the impact of the model's ability to predict demographics on its scoring outcomes. Our findings revealed that (i) prompt-based LLMs can somewhat infer students' demographics, particularly their first-language backgrounds, from their essays; (ii) scoring biases are more pronounced when the LLM correctly predicts students' first-language background than when it does not; and (iii) scoring error for non-native English speakers increases when the LLM correctly identifies them as non-native.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Towards responsible AI for education: Hybrid human-AI to confront the Elephant in the room

Despite significant advancements in AI-driven educational systems and ongoing calls for responsible AI for education, several critical issues remain unresolved -- acting as the elephant in the room within AI in education, learning analytics, educational data mining, learning sciences, and educational psychology communities. This critical analysis identifies and examines nine persistent challenges that continue to undermine the fairness, transparency, and effectiveness of current AI methods and applications in education. These include: (1) the lack of clarity around what AI for education truly means -- often ignoring the distinct purposes, strengths, and limitations of different AI families -- and the trend of equating it with domain-agnostic, company-driven large language models; (2) the widespread neglect of essential learning processes such as motivation, emotion, and (meta)cognition in AI-driven learner modelling and their contextual nature; (3) limited integration of domain knowledge and lack of stakeholder involvement in AI design and development; (4) continued use of non-sequential machine learning models on temporal educational data; (5) misuse of non-sequential metrics to evaluate sequential models; (6) use of unreliable explainable AI methods to provide explanations for black-box models; (7) ignoring ethical guidelines in addressing data inconsistencies during model training; (8) use of mainstream AI methods for pattern discovery and learning analytics without systematic benchmarking; and (9) overemphasis on global prescriptions while overlooking localised, student-specific recommendations. Supported by theoretical and empirical research, we demonstrate how hybrid AI methods -- specifically neural-symbolic AI -- can address the elephant in the room and serve as the foundation for responsible, trustworthy AI systems in education.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Beware of Metacognitive Laziness: Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Learning Motivation, Processes, and Performance

With the continuous development of technological and educational innovation, learners nowadays can obtain a variety of support from agents such as teachers, peers, education technologies, and recently, generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT. The concept of hybrid intelligence is still at a nascent stage, and how learners can benefit from a symbiotic relationship with various agents such as AI, human experts and intelligent learning systems is still unknown. The emerging concept of hybrid intelligence also lacks deep insights and understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of hybrid human-AI learning based on strong empirical research. In order to address this gap, we conducted a randomised experimental study and compared learners' motivations, self-regulated learning processes and learning performances on a writing task among different groups who had support from different agents (ChatGPT, human expert, writing analytics tools, and no extra tool). A total of 117 university students were recruited, and their multi-channel learning, performance and motivation data were collected and analysed. The results revealed that: learners who received different learning support showed no difference in post-task intrinsic motivation; there were significant differences in the frequency and sequences of the self-regulated learning processes among groups; ChatGPT group outperformed in the essay score improvement but their knowledge gain and transfer were not significantly different. Our research found that in the absence of differences in motivation, learners with different supports still exhibited different self-regulated learning processes, ultimately leading to differentiated performance. What is particularly noteworthy is that AI technologies such as ChatGPT may promote learners' dependence on technology and potentially trigger metacognitive laziness.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Self-regulated Learning Processes in Secondary Education: A Network Analysis of Trace-based Measures

While the capacity to self-regulate has been found to be crucial for secondary school students, prior studies often rely on self-report surveys and think-aloud protocols that present notable limitations in capturing self-regulated learning (SRL) processes. This study advances the understanding of SRL in secondary education by using trace data to examine SRL processes during multi-source writing tasks, with higher education participants included for comparison. We collected fine-grained trace data from 66 secondary school students and 59 university students working on the same writing tasks within a shared SRL-oriented learning environment. The data were labelled using Bannert's validated SRL coding scheme to reflect specific SRL processes, and we examined the relationship between these processes, essay performance, and educational levels. Using epistemic network analysis (ENA) to model and visualise the interconnected SRL processes in Bannert's coding scheme, we found that: (a) secondary school students predominantly engaged in three SRL processes -- Orientation, Re-reading, and Elaboration/Organisation; (b) high-performing secondary students engaged more in Re-reading, while low-performing students showed more Orientation process; and (c) higher education students exhibited more diverse SRL processes such as Monitoring and Evaluation than their secondary education counterparts, who heavily relied on following task instructions and rubrics to guide their writing. These findings highlight the necessity of designing scaffolding tools and developing teacher training programs to enhance awareness and development of SRL skills for secondary school learners.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Modifying AI, Enhancing Essays: How Active Engagement with Generative AI Boosts Writing Quality

Students are increasingly relying on Generative AI (GAI) to support their writing-a key pedagogical practice in education. In GAI-assisted writing, students can delegate core cognitive tasks (e.g., generating ideas and turning them into sentences) to GAI while still producing high-quality essays. This creates new challenges for teachers in assessing and supporting student learning, as they often lack insight into whether students are engaging in meaningful cognitive processes during writing or how much of the essay's quality can be attributed to those processes. This study aimed to help teachers better assess and support student learning in GAI-assisted writing by examining how different writing behaviors, especially those indicative of meaningful learning versus those that are not, impact essay quality. Using a dataset of 1,445 GAI-assisted writing sessions, we applied the cutting-edge method, X-Learner, to quantify the causal impact of three GAI-assisted writing behavioral patterns (i.e., seeking suggestions but not accepting them, seeking suggestions and accepting them as they are, and seeking suggestions and accepting them with modification) on four measures of essay quality (i.e., lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, text cohesion, and linguistic bias). Our analysis showed that writers who frequently modified GAI-generated text-suggesting active engagement in higher-order cognitive processes-consistently improved the quality of their essays in terms of lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and text cohesion. In contrast, those who often accepted GAI-generated text without changes, primarily engaging in lower-order processes, saw a decrease in essay quality. Additionally, while human writers tend to introduce linguistic bias when writing independently, incorporating GAI-generated text-even without modification-can help mitigate this bias.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

From Complexity to Parsimony: Integrating Latent Class Analysis to Uncover Multimodal Learning Patterns in Collaborative Learning

Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) leverages advanced sensing technologies and artificial intelligence to capture complex learning processes, but integrating diverse data sources into cohesive insights remains challenging. This study introduces a novel methodology for integrating latent class analysis (LCA) within MMLA to map monomodal behavioural indicators into parsimonious multimodal ones. Using a high-fidelity healthcare simulation context, we collected positional, audio, and physiological data, deriving 17 monomodal indicators. LCA identified four distinct latent classes: Collaborative Communication, Embodied Collaboration, Distant Interaction, and Solitary Engagement, each capturing unique monomodal patterns. Epistemic network analysis compared these multimodal indicators with the original monomodal indicators and found that the multimodal approach was more parsimonious while offering higher explanatory power regarding students' task and collaboration performances. The findings highlight the potential of LCA in simplifying the analysis of complex multimodal data while capturing nuanced, cross-modality behaviours, offering actionable insights for educators and enhancing the design of collaborative learning interventions. This study proposes a pathway for advancing MMLA, making it more parsimonious and manageable, and aligning with the principles of learner-centred education.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Chatting with a Learning Analytics Dashboard: The Role of Generative AI Literacy on Learner Interaction with Conventional and Scaffolding Chatbots

Learning analytics dashboards (LADs) simplify complex learner data into accessible visualisations, providing actionable insights for educators and students. However, their educational effectiveness has not always matched the sophistication of the technology behind them. Explanatory and interactive LADs, enhanced by generative AI (GenAI) chatbots, hold promise by enabling dynamic, dialogue-based interactions with data visualisations and offering personalised feedback through text. Yet, the effectiveness of these tools may be limited by learners' varying levels of GenAI literacy, a factor that remains underexplored in current research. This study investigates the role of GenAI literacy in learner interactions with conventional (reactive) versus scaffolding (proactive) chatbot-assisted LADs. Through a comparative analysis of 81 participants, we examine how GenAI literacy is associated with learners' ability to interpret complex visualisations and their cognitive processes during interactions with chatbot-assisted LADs. Results show that while both chatbots significantly improved learner comprehension, those with higher GenAI literacy benefited the most, particularly with conventional chatbots, demonstrating diverse prompting strategies. Findings highlight the importance of considering learners' GenAI literacy when integrating GenAI chatbots in LADs and educational technologies. Incorporating scaffolding techniques within GenAI chatbots can be an effective strategy, offering a more guided experience that reduces reliance on learners' GenAI literacy.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

The Effects of Generative AI Agents and Scaffolding on Enhancing Students' Comprehension of Visual Learning Analytics

Visual learning analytics (VLA) is becoming increasingly adopted in educational technologies and learning analytics dashboards to convey critical insights to students and educators. Yet many students experienced difficulties in comprehending complex VLA due to their limited data visualisation literacy. While conventional scaffolding approaches like data storytelling have shown effectiveness in enhancing students' comprehension of VLA, these approaches remain difficult to scale and adapt to individual learning needs. Generative AI (GenAI) technologies, especially conversational agents, offer potential solutions by providing personalised and dynamic support to enhance students' comprehension of VLA. This study investigates the effectiveness of GenAI agents, particularly when integrated with scaffolding techniques, in improving students' comprehension of VLA. A randomised controlled trial was conducted with 117 higher education students to compare the effects of two types of GenAI agents: passive agents, which respond to student queries, and proactive agents, which utilise scaffolding questions, against standalone scaffolding in a VLA comprehension task. The results show that passive agents yield comparable improvements to standalone scaffolding both during and after the intervention. Notably, proactive GenAI agents significantly enhance students' VLA comprehension compared to both passive agents and standalone scaffolding, with these benefits persisting beyond the intervention. These findings suggest that integrating GenAI agents with scaffolding can have lasting positive effects on students' comprehension skills and support genuine learning.

cs.HC↗