Research

Studying LLMs in education: tutors, practice, and more.

My current research asks how students actually use LLMs while learning programming, data science, and AI — and how course design can encourage productive use instead of undermining the learning process.

Current AI-in-education work

Earlier research areas

Older work spans human-robot interaction, robotic vocabulary acquisition, game AI, web behavior, cybersecurity, cognitive modeling, and machine learning.

Human-robot interaction

Work on robotic vocabulary building, self-recognition, prosody, and models of interaction.

Game AI and interactive systems

Work on goal recognition, probabilistic models of play, rhythm games, and designer-driven intention recognition.

Web behavior and cybersecurity

Work on website traffic patterns, communication goals, network traffic, and detecting compromised accounts.

Complete bibliography

Peer-reviewed scientific publications

  1. 2025K. Gold. “LLM Practice Problem Generation in a Beginning Programming Class.” Proceedings of AIET 2025, collected in Springer Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies. Best-in-session award.
  2. 2024K. Gold and S. Geng. “On the Helpfulness of a Zero-Shot Socratic Tutor.” Proceedings of AIET 2024, collected in Artificial Intelligence in Education Technologies: New Development and Innovative Practices, ed. Tim Schlippe, Eric C. K. Cheng, Tianchong Wang. Springer Singapore. Best-in-session award.
  3. 2024K. Gold and S. Geng. “Tracking the Evolution of Student Interactions with an LLM-powered Tutor.” Proceedings of the 14th Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK ’24). ACM.
  4. 2013B. Priest and K. Gold. “Utility Discounting Explains Informational Website Traffic Patterns Before a Hurricane.” Proceedings of WWW 2013. ACM Press.
  5. 2013K. Gold. “Learning to Efficiently Pursue Communication Goals on the Web with the GOSMR Architecture.” Proceedings of AAAI 2013. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  6. 2013K. Gold, Z. Weber, B. Priest, J. Ziegler, K. Sittig, W. Streilein, and M. Mazumder. “Modeling How Thinking About the Past and Future Impacts Network Traffic with the GOSMR Architecture.” Proceedings of AAMAS 2013. ACM Press.
  7. 2013K. Gold, B. Priest, and K. Carter. “An Expectation Maximization Approach to Detecting Compromised Remote Access Accounts.” Proceedings of FLAIRS 2013 Cyber Security Track. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  8. 2011K. Gold. “Trigram Timmies and Bayesian Johnnies: Probabilistic Models of Personality in Dominion.” Proceedings of AIIDE 2011. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  9. 2011K. Gold, C. Havasi, M. Anderson, and K. Arnold. “Comparing Matrix Decomposition Methods for Meta-analysis and Reconstruction of Cognitive Neuroscience Results.” Proceedings of FLAIRS 2011. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  10. 2010K. Gold and A. Olivier. “Using Machine Translation to Convert Between Difficulties in Rhythm Games.” Proceedings of AIIDE 2010. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  11. 2010K. Gold. “Training Goal Recognition Online from Low-Level Inputs in an Action-Adventure Game.” Proceedings of AIIDE 2010. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  12. 2010K. Gold and A. Petrosino. “Using Information Gain to Build Meaningful Decision Forests for Multilabel Classification.” ICDL 2010, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  13. 2010K. Gold. “Designer-Driven Intention Recognition in an Action-Adventure Game Using Fast Forward Bayesian Models.” Proceedings of FLAIRS 2010. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  14. 2010A. Piplica, A. Olivier, A. Petrosino, and K. Gold. “Learning to Identify and Track Imaginary Objects Implied by Gestures.” Proceedings of FLAIRS 2010. AAAI Press: Menlo Park, CA.
  15. 2009K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Using Probabilistic Reasoning Over Time to Self-Recognize.” Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) 57(4), p. 384–392.
  16. 2009K. Gold, M. Doniec, C. Crick, and B. Scassellati. “Robotic Vocabulary Building Using Extension Inference and Implicit Contrast.” Artificial Intelligence (AIJ) 173(1), p. 145–166.
  17. 2009K. Gold. “An Information Pipeline Model of Human-Robot Interaction.” Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI-09), La Jolla, CA.
  18. 2008E. Kim, K. Gold, and B. Scassellati. “What Prosody Tells Infants to Believe.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-08), Monterey, CA.
  19. 2007K. Gold, M. Doniec, and B. Scassellati. “Learning Grounded Semantics With Word Trees: Prepositions and Pronouns.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-07), London, UK. Best Paper Award.
  20. 2007K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “A robot that uses existing vocabulary to infer non-visual word meanings from observation.” Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-07), Vancouver, BC, Canada.
  21. 2007K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “A Bayesian robot that distinguishes ‘self’ from ‘other.’” Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2007), Nashville, Tennessee.
  22. 2007K. Gold, I. Fasel, N. Freier, and C. Torrey. “Young researchers’ views on the current and future state of HRI.” Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI-07), Arlington, Virginia.
  23. 2006K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Learning acceptable windows of contingency.” Connection Science 18(2), p. 217–228.
  24. 2006K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Deictic pronoun learning and mirror self-identification.” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (EpiRob-06), Paris, France, p. 49–54.
  25. 2006K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Audio speech segmentation without language-specific knowledge.” Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2006), Vancouver, Canada.
  26. 2006K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Grounded pronoun learning and pronoun reversal.” 5th International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-06), Bloomington, Indiana, 2006.
  27. 2006K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Using context and sensory data to learn first and second person pronouns.” Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI-06), Salt Lake City, Utah, p. 110–117.
  28. 2004P. Michel, K. Gold, and B. Scassellati. “Motion-based robotic self-recognition.” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-04). Sendai, Japan.

Dissertation

  1. 2008K. Gold. “Using Sentence Context and Implicit Contrast to Learn Sensor-Grounded Meanings for Relational and Deictic Words: The TWIG System.” Yale University, May 2008.

Trade magazine articles

  1. 2006B. Scassellati, C. Crick, K. Gold, E. Kim, F. Shic, and G. Sun. “Social development.” Computational Intelligence Magazine (IEEE) 1(3), p. 41–47.

Workshop and symposium papers

  1. 2010A. Petrosino and K. Gold. “Toward Fast Mapping for Robot Adjective Learning.” 2010 AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialog with Robots. Arlington, Virginia.
  2. 2010A. Piplica, A. Olivier, A. Petrosino, and K. Gold. “Learning to Place Imaginary Objects Implied by Gestures in Video.” IRIS Intelligent Robots and Sensors Symposium, Nagoya, Japan.
  3. 2006K. Gold. “Why robotic ethical claims will outpace their understanding.” Artificial Life X Ethical Robots Workshop. Bloomington, Indiana.
  4. 2005K. Gold and B. Scassellati. “Learning about the self and others through contingency.” 2005 AAAI Spring Symposium on Developmental Robotics. Stanford, California.