Examining Variation in How Guided AI Tutors Resolve Student Impasses
When a student is stuck, a tutor faces the assistance dilemma: help given too early can hinder productive struggle, while help withheld too long leaves the student in a frustrating, persistent impasse (i.e., wheel spinning). Generative AI tutors increasingly use guardrails restricting answer-giving, yet little is known about how such tutors behave once an impasse persists. We analyze 20,462 student turns from 1,260 authentic sessions with a guided LLM chemistry tutor, identifying 6,630 impasse turns of three major types: conceptual errors, expressed uncertainty, or help-seeking. We then used these impasses to simulate three tutoring conditions to study variation in AI tutor guidance throu...
| Authors | Bakhtawar Ahtisham, Kirk Vanacore, Alessandra Napoli et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 29 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 29 September 2026 |
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