Contribution: This Full paper in the Research Category track describes a practical, scalable platform that seamlessly integrates Generative AI (GenAI) with online educational forums, offering a novel approach to augment the instructional capabilities of staff. The platform empowers instructional staff to efficiently manage, refine, and approve responses by facilitating interaction between student posts and a Large Language Model (LLM). This contribution enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of instructional support and significantly improves the quality and speed of responses provided to students, thereby enriching the overall learning experience. Background: Grounded in Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory and the concept of the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO), the study examines how GenAI can act as an auxiliary MKO to enrich educational dialogue between students and instructors. Research Question: How effective is GenAI in reducing the workload of instructional staff when used to pre-answer student questions posted on educational discussion forums? Methodology: Using a mixed-methods approach in large introductory programming courses, human Teaching Assistants (AI-TAs) employed an AI-assisted platform to pre-answer student queries. We analyzed efficiency indicators like the frequency of modifications to AI-generated responses and gathered qualitative feedback from AI-TAs. Findings: The findings indicate no significant difference in student reception to responses generated by AI-TAs compared to those provided by human instructors. This suggests that GenAI can effectively meet educational needs when adequately managed. Moreover, AI-TAs experienced a reduction in the cognitive load required for responding to queries, pointing to GenAI's potential to enhance instructional efficiency without compromising the quality of education.

翻译：贡献：本文作为研究类完整论文，介绍了一个实用、可扩展的平台，该平台将生成式人工智能（GenAI）与在线教育论坛无缝集成，为增强教学人员的教学能力提供了一种新方法。该平台通过促进学生帖子与大型语言模型（LLM）之间的交互，赋能教学人员高效管理、优化和批准回复。这一贡献提升了教学支持的效率和效果，并显著提高了向学生提供回复的质量和速度，从而丰富了整体学习体验。背景：本研究基于维果茨基的社会文化理论和“更有知识的他者”（MKO）概念，探讨了GenAI如何作为辅助性MKO来丰富学生与教师之间的教育对话。研究问题：当用于预先回答学生在教育讨论论坛上发布的问题时，GenAI在减轻教学人员工作量方面的效果如何？方法：在大型编程入门课程中采用混合方法，人类助教（AI-TA）使用AI辅助平台预先回答学生疑问。我们分析了如对AI生成回复的修改频率等效率指标，并收集了AI-TA的定性反馈。发现：研究结果表明，学生对AI-TA生成的回复与人类教师提供的回复的接受度没有显著差异。这表明，在得到适当管理的情况下，GenAI能够有效满足教育需求。此外，AI-TA在回答疑问时所需的认知负荷有所降低，这指出了GenAI在保证教育质量的同时提升教学效率的潜力。