Zhihao Qin

Liangliang Chen, Zhihao Qin, Yiming Guo et al.

Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize various fields, including code development, robotics, finance, and education, due to their extensive prior knowledge and rapid advancements. This paper investigates how LLMs can be leveraged in engineering education. Specifically, we benchmark the capabilities of different LLMs, including GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4o, and Llama 3 70B, in assessing homework for an undergraduate-level circuit analysis course. We have developed a novel dataset consisting of official reference solutions and real student solutions to problems from various topics in circuit analysis. To overcome the limitations of image recognition in current state-of-the-art LLMs, the solutions in the dataset are converted to LaTeX format. Using this dataset, a prompt template is designed to test five metrics of student solutions: completeness, method, final answer, arithmetic error, and units. The results show that GPT-4o and Llama 3 70B perform significantly better than GPT-3.5 Turbo across all five metrics, with GPT-4o and Llama 3 70B each having distinct advantages in different evaluation aspects. Additionally, we present insights into the limitations of current LLMs in several aspects of circuit analysis. Given the paramount importance of ensuring reliability in LLM-generated homework assessment to avoid misleading students, our results establish benchmarks and offer valuable insights for the development of a reliable, personalized tutor for circuit analysis -- a focus of our future work. Furthermore, the proposed evaluation methods can be generalized to a broader range of courses for engineering education in the future.

Liangliang Chen, Huiru Xie, Zhihao Qin et al.

This research full paper presents an enhancement pipeline for large language models (LLMs) in assessing homework for an undergraduate circuit analysis course, aiming to improve LLMs' capacity to provide personalized support to electrical engineering students. Existing evaluations have demonstrated that GPT-4o possesses promising capabilities in assessing student homework in this domain. Building on these findings, we enhance GPT-4o's performance through multi-step prompting, contextual data augmentation, and the incorporation of targeted hints. These strategies effectively address common errors observed in GPT-4o's responses when using simple prompts, leading to a substantial improvement in assessment accuracy. Specifically, the correct response rate for GPT-4o increases from 74.71% to 97.70% after applying the enhanced prompting and augmented data on entry-level circuit analysis topics. This work lays a foundation for the effective integration of LLMs into circuit analysis instruction and, more broadly, into engineering education.

Abigail R. Cohen, Yuming Sun, Zhihao Qin et al.

Efficient nutrient management is critical for crop growth and sustainable resource consumption (e.g., nitrogen, energy). Current approaches require lengthy analyses, preventing real-time optimization; similarly, imaging facilitates rapid phenotyping but can be computationally intensive, preventing deployment under resource constraints. This study proposes a flexible, tiered pipeline for anomaly detection and status estimation (fresh weight, dry mass, and tissue nutrients), including a comprehensive energy analysis of approaches that span the efficiency-accuracy spectrum. Using a nutrient depletion experiment with three treatments (T1-100%, T2-50%, and T3-25% fertilizer strength) and multispectral imaging (MSI), we developed a hierarchical pipeline using an autoencoder (AE) for early warning. Further, we compared two status estimation modules of different complexity for more detailed analysis: vegetation index (VI) features with machine learning (Random Forest, RF) and raw whole-image deep learning (Vision Transformer, ViT). Results demonstrated high-efficiency anomaly detection (73% net detection of T3 samples 9 days after transplanting) at substantially lower energy than embodied energy in wasted nitrogen. The state estimation modules show trade-offs, with ViT outperforming RF on phosphorus and calcium estimation (R2 0.61 vs. 0.58, 0.48 vs. 0.35) at higher energy cost. With our modular pipeline, this work opens opportunities for edge diagnostics and practical opportunities for agricultural sustainability.