arXiv:2601.08950v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Despite their growing adoption in education, LLMs remain misaligned with the core principle of effective tutoring: the dialogic construction of knowledge. We introduce ConvoLearn, a dataset of 2,134 semi-synthetic tutor-student dialogues operationalizing six dimensions of dialogic tutoring grounded in knowledge-building theory, situated in middle school Earth Science curriculum. We show that dimension-labeled dialogic training data captures meaningful pedagogical signal that generalizes beyond its semi-synthetic domain: scores from a classifier trained on ConvoLearn correlate significantly with expert-coded instructional quality in authentic classrooms across multiple subscales (range r = .118-.258, all p < .05). As a proof of concept, we fine-tune Mistral-7B on ConvoLearn and show that dimension-level fine-tuning can steer a 7B open-weight model toward dialogic tutoring behavior that credentialed teachers rate as competitive with a strong proprietary baseline. With this work, we support the development of AI tutors capable of more dialogic interactions.
Identifying needs in adult rehabilitation to support the clinical implementation of robotics and allied technologies: an Italian national survey
IntroductionRobotics and technological interventions are increasingly being explored as solutions to improve rehabilitation outcomes but their implementation in clinical practice remains very limited. Understanding patient