Proceedings chapter
OA Policy
English

Offline Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Feedback in Online Programming Education

Presented at27th International Conference, AIED 2026, Seoul, 27.06-03.07 2026
Published inBlanchard, E. G., Chen, G., Chi, M. & Isotani, S. (Ed.), Artificial Intelligence in Education, p. 79-93
PublisherCham : Springer Nature Switzerland
Collection
  • Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Publication date2026
First online date2026-06-25
Abstract

Selecting effective feedback for learners at each stage of the programming problem-solving process remains an underexplored challenge in programming education, despite recent advances in automated feedback generation. This paper investigates feedback policy optimization using interaction logs collected from a deployed rule-based feedback system (over 25,000 interactions). We introduce an offline reinforcement learning approach that encodes distinct instructional objectives into reward functions. By modelling feedback selection as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and training policies with Conservative Q-Learning (CQL), which enables robust learning from fixed datasets, we show that the learned policies yield consistently higher expected returns than the baseline rule-based policy across all evaluated objectives. Further analysis reveals that optimal feedback strategies vary systematically according to instructional objectives, underscoring the limitations of relying on a single, fixed feedback choice and the need for adaptive feedback selection that is systematically aligned with specified instructional objectives.

Keywords
  • Feedback Policy
  • Computer Science Education
  • Offline Reinforcement Learning
  • Programming Plateform
Citation (ISO format)
KIROUCHENASSAMY, Badmavasan et al. Offline Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Feedback in Online Programming Education. In: Artificial Intelligence in Education. Blanchard, E. G., Chen, G., Chi, M. & Isotani, S. (Ed.). Seoul. Cham : Springer Nature Switzerland, 2026. p. 79–93. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) doi: 10.1007/978-3-032-29755-6_6
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Proceedings chapter (Accepted version)
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ISBN9783032297549
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