Student simulation in online education is important to address dynamic learning behaviors of students with diverse backgrounds. Existing simulation models based on deep learning usually need massive training data, lacking prior knowledge in educational contexts. Large language models (LLMs) may contain such prior knowledge since they are pre-trained from a large corpus. However, because student behaviors are dynamic and multifaceted with individual differences, directly prompting LLMs is not robust nor accurate enough to capture fine-grained interactions among diverse student personas, learning behaviors, and learning outcomes. This work tackles this problem by presenting a newly annotated fine-grained large-scale dataset and proposing EduAgent, a novel generative agent framework incorporating cognitive prior knowledge (i.e., theoretical findings revealed in cognitive science) to guide LLMs to first reason correlations among various behaviors and then make simulations. Our two experiments show that EduAgent could not only mimic and predict learning behaviors of real students but also generate realistic learning behaviors of virtual students without real data.

该研究提出了一种新的生成代理框架EduAgent，结合认知先验知识来引导大型语言模型首先推理各种行为之间的相关性，然后进行模拟，实现对真实学生和虚拟学生学习行为的模仿、预测和生成。

EduAgent: 学习中的生成型学生代理