Multi-sourced AI Tutor for Non-Native English Speaker Students

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated the ability to generate formative feedback and instructional hints in English, making them increasingly relevant for AI-assisted education. However, their ability to provide effective instructional support across different languages, especially for mathematically grounded reasoning tasks, remains largely unexamined. In this work, we present the first large-scale simulation of multilingual student-tutor interactions using LLMs. A stronger model plays the role of the tutor, generating feedback in the form of hints, while a weaker model simulates the student. We explore 352 experimental settings across 11 typologically diverse languages, four state-of-the-art LLMs, and multiple prompting strategies to assess whether language-specific feedback leads to measurable learning gains. Our study examines how student input language, tutor feedback language, model choice, and language resource level jointly influence performance. Results show that English hints are generally preferred, even by multilingual student LLMs, with few exceptions that lead to improved student learning outcomes. These findings offer practical insights for developing multilingual, LLM-based educational tools that are both effective and inclusive.

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into educational ecosystems promises to democratize access to personalized tutoring, yet the readiness of these systems for deployment in non-Western, low-resource contexts remains critically under-examined. This study presents a systematic evaluation of four state-of-the-art LLMs--GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 4, Qwen3-235B, and Kimi K2--assessing their capacity to function as AI tutors within the specific curricular and cultural framework of Nepal's Grade 5-10 Science and Mathematics education. We introduce a novel, curriculum-aligned benchmark and a fine-grained evaluation framework inspired by the "natural language unit tests" paradigm, decomposing pedagogical efficacy into seven binary metrics: Prompt Alignment, Factual Correctness, Clarity, Contextual Relevance, Engagement, Harmful Content Avoidance, and Solution Accuracy. Our results reveal a stark "curriculum-alignment gap." While frontier models (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 4) achieve high aggregate reliability (approximately 97%), significant deficiencies persist in pedagogical clarity and cultural contextualization. We identify two pervasive failure modes: the "Expert's Curse," where models solve complex problems but fail to explain them clearly to novices, and the "Foundational Fallacy," where performance paradoxically degrades on simpler, lower-grade material due to an inability to adapt to younger learners' cognitive constraints. Furthermore, regional models like Kimi K2 exhibit a "Contextual Blindspot," failing to provide culturally relevant examples in over 20% of interactions. These findings suggest that off-the-shelf LLMs are not yet ready for autonomous deployment in Nepalese classrooms. We propose a "human-in-the-loop" deployment strategy and offer a methodological blueprint for curriculum-specific fine-tuning to align global AI capabilities with local educational needs.

Providing timely and accurate learning support in large-scale online coding courses is challenging, particularly in resource-constrained contexts. We present Kwame 2.0, a bilingual (English-French) generative AI teaching assistant built using retrieval-augmented generation and deployed in a human-in-the-loop forum within SuaCode, an introductory mobile-based coding course for learners across Africa. Kwame 2.0 retrieves relevant course materials and generates context-aware responses while encouraging human oversight and community participation. We deployed the system in a 15-month longitudinal study spanning 15 cohorts with 3,717 enrollments across 35 African countries. Evaluation using community feedback and expert ratings shows that Kwame 2.0 provided high-quality and timely support, achieving high accuracy on curriculum-related questions, while human facilitators and peers effectively mitigated errors, particularly for administrative queries. Our findings demonstrate that human-in-the-loop generative AI systems can combine the scalability and speed of AI with the reliability of human support, offering an effective approach to learning assistance for underrepresented populations in resource-constrained settings at scale.