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  1. Research into "gaming the system" behavior in intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) has been around for almost two decades, and detection has been developed for many ITSs. Machine learning models can detect this behavior in both real-time and in historical data. However, intelligent tutoring system designs often change over time, in terms of the design of the student interface, assessment models, and data collection log schemas. Can gaming detectors still be trusted, a decade or more after they are developed? In this research, we evaluate the robustness/degradation of gaming detectors when trained on older data logs and evaluated on current data logs. We demonstrate that some machine learning models developed using past data are still able to predict gaming behavior from student data collected 16 years later, but that there is considerable variance in how well different algorithms perform over time. We demonstrate that a classic decision tree algorithm maintained its performance while more contemporary algorithms struggled to transfer to new data, even though they exhibited better performance on unseen students in both New and Old data sets by themselves. Examining the feature importance values provides some explanation for the differences in performance between models, and offers some insight into how we might safeguard against detector rot over time. 
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  2. Roll, I. ; McNamara, D. ; Sosnovsky, S. ; Luckin, R. ; Dimitrova, V. (Ed.)
    Scaffolding and providing feedback on problem-solving activities during online learning has consistently been shown to improve performance in younger learners. However, less is known about the impacts of feedback strategies on adult learners. This paper investigates how two computer-based support strategies, hints and required scaffolding questions, contribute to performance and behavior in an edX MOOC with integrated assignments from ASSISTments, a web-based platform that implements diverse student supports. Results from a sample of 188 adult learners indicated that those given scaffolds benefited less from ASSISTments support and were more likely to request the correct answer from the system. 
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