[Submitted on 8 Sep 2026]
Title:One Mastery Threshold Does Not Fit All Knowledge Tracing Models
View a PDF of the paper titled One Mastery Threshold Does Not Fit All Knowledge Tracing Models, by Xianghui Meng and 1 other authors
View PDF
Abstract:Tutoring systems use mastery thresholds to decide when students can stop practicing and advance, but the same numerical threshold can lead to very different decisions when the underlying knowledge tracing (KT) model changes. We examine six KT models across four public educational datasets and evaluate 12 thresholds from 0.50 to 0.99 using post-advancement performance, advancement coverage, practice burden, and disparities across prior-performance groups. We also identify thresholds that balance performance, extra practice, and advancement under 30 predefined instructional settings. Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) is relatively insensitive to threshold changes, while neural models become much more selective as thresholds increase. This partly reflects different model outputs: BKT estimates latent mastery probability, whereas neural models estimate the probability of a correct next response, so the same cutoff does not represent the same level of mastery. The best-balanced threshold varied substantially across models and settings. In half of the tested settings, neural models and BKT differed by more than 0.10 in their selected thresholds, although this gap became smaller when greater priority was placed on reducing extra practice and allowing more students to advance. Stricter thresholds also did not reliably reduce performance gaps and could disproportionately restrict advancement, with stronger-prior students advancing up to 3.26 times as often as weaker-prior students. These results show that mastery thresholds should be recalibrated when the KT model or instructional priorities change and evaluated by their effects on performance, practice, advancement, and access.
Subjects:
Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2610.00095 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2610.00095v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.00095
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
Submission history
From: Xianghui Meng [view email] [v1] Tue, 8 Sep 2026 14:18:39 UTC (610 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
View a PDF of the paper titled One Mastery Threshold Does Not Fit All Knowledge Tracing Models, by Xianghui Meng and 1 other authors
View PDF
view license
Current browse context:
cs.LG
new | recent | 2026-10
Change to browse by:
cs
References & Citations
NASA ADS
Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar
Loading...
Data provided by:
Bibliographic Tools
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)
Author
Venue
Institution
Topic
About arXivLabs
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)