Cognitive presence and social presence are crucial for a comprehensive learning experience. Despite the flexibility of asynchronous learning environments to accommodate individual schedules, the inherent constraints of asynchronous environments make augmenting cognitive and social presence particularly challenging. Students often face challenges such as a lack of timely feedback and support, a lack of non-verbal cues in communication, and a sense of isolation. To address this challenge, this paper introduces Generative Co-Learners, a system designed to leverage generative AI-powered agents, simulating co-learners supporting multimodal interactions, to improve cognitive and social presence in asynchronous learning environments. We conducted a study involving 12 student participants who used our system to engage with online programming tutorials to assess the system's effectiveness. The results show that by implementing features to support textual and visual communication and simulate an interactive learning environment with generative agents, our system enhances the cognitive and social presence in the asynchronous learning environment. These results suggest the potential to use generative AI to support students learning at scale and transform asynchronous learning into a more inclusive, engaging, and efficacious educational approach.

翻译：认知临场感与社会临场感对于全面的学习体验至关重要。尽管异步学习环境能够灵活适应个人时间安排，但其固有局限使得增强认知与社会临场感尤为困难。学生常面临缺乏及时反馈与支持、交流中非语言线索缺失以及孤独感等挑战。为应对这一难题，本文提出“生成式共学伙伴”系统，该系统利用生成式人工智能驱动的智能体，模拟支持多模态交互的共学伙伴，以提升异步学习环境中的认知与社会临场感。我们开展了一项涉及12名学生参与者的研究，参与者使用本系统参与在线编程教程以评估系统效能。结果表明，通过实现支持文本与视觉交流的功能，并利用生成式智能体模拟互动学习环境，本系统有效增强了异步学习环境中的认知与社会临场感。这些发现揭示了运用生成式人工智能支持规模化学生学习的潜力，并有望将异步学习转变为更具包容性、参与性和高效性的教育模式。