Reinforcement Learning in Education: A Literature Review

Abstract

The utilization of reinforcement learning (RL) within the field of education holds the potential to bring about a significant shift in the way students approach and engage with learning and how teachers evaluate student progress. The use of RL in education allows for personalized and adaptive learning, where the difficulty level can be adjusted based on a student’s performance. As a result, this could result in heightened levels of motivation and engagement among students. The aim of this article is to investigate the applications and techniques of RL in education and determine its potential impact on enhancing educational outcomes. It compares the various policies induced by RL with baselines and identifies four distinct RL techniques: the Markov decision process, partially observable Markov decision process, deep RL network, and Markov chain, as well as their application in education. The main focus of the article is to identify best practices for incorporating RL into educational settings to achieve effective and rewarding outcomes. To accomplish this, the article thoroughly examines the existing literature on using RL in education and its potential to advance educational technology. This work provides a thorough analysis of the various techniques and applications of RL in education to answer questions related to the effectiveness of RL in education and its future prospects. The findings of this study will provide researchers with a benchmark to compare the usefulness and effectiveness of commonly employed RL algorithms and provide direction for future research in education.