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A: After comparing the standardised documents of the journals, this article conforms to the style and naming convention of the article.

2. Please note that PLOS ONE has specific guidelines on code sharing for submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, we expect all author-generated code to be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse.

A: The algorithms and simulation code covered in this paper are fully publicly available.

3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“This work is partially supported by 2025 Key Research Project of Shenzhen Polytechnic University "Research on Key Methods for Analysis and Prediction of Social Behaviour of Specific Characters on Multimodal Big Data (6025310008K)", 2024 Guangdong Province Education Science Planning Project (Higher Education Special Project) "Research on Smart Classroom Teaching Behavior Analysis Methods Based on Scene Semantic Understanding and Deep Learning Characteristic Representation (2024GXJK766)", 2023 Guangdong Provincial Higher Vocational Education Teaching Reform Research and Practice Project "Research on Online Teaching Quality Evaluation Method Based on Multimodal Affective State Analysis (2023JG277)", 2024 Shenzhen Polytechnic University Quality Engineering Project "Research on Classroom Scene Understanding and Behavior Analysis Method Based on Multimodal Attention Mechanisms (7024310268)", 2024 Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project of the Chinese Society of Higher Education "Research on the Analysis of Teaching and Learning Deep Interaction Characteristics in Smart Classroom Environment Supported by Multimodal Data (24XH0407)", 2023 Shenzhen Education Science Planning Project"Research on the Evolutionary Mechanism and Intervention of Interpersonal Relationships among College Students Driven by Multimodal Data (rgzn23003)".

Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

A: After careful combing, this paper mainly relies on the following six topics to carry out relevant research, and the algorithms proposed in the text are all supported by the following topics, including scientific research platforms, simulation data, and test applications.

1.2025 Guangdong Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project "Research on the Synergistic Evolutionary Mechanisms of the Governance System of Colleges and Universities and the Development of Students’ Socio-emotional Competence: Based on Multimodal Learning Analysis (GD25CJY29)".

2.2025 Key Research Project of Shenzhen Polytechnic University "Research on Key Methods for Analysis and Prediction of Social Behaviour of Specific Characters on Multimodal Big Data (6025310008K)", the research in this paper relies on this topic to carry out research aimed at solving the spatial mapping problem of multimodal heterogeneous features.

3.2024 Guangdong Province Education Science Planning Project (Higher Education Special Project) "Research on Smart Classroom Teaching Behavior Analysis Methods Based on Scene Semantic Understanding and Deep Learning Characteristic Representation (2024GXJK766)", based mainly on this topic, the research on behaviour detection is oriented towards the problem of joint mining for scene saliency regions and behaviour recognition.

4.2023 Guangdong Provincial Higher Vocational Education Teaching Reform Research and Practice Project "Research on Online Teaching Quality Evaluation Method Based on Multimodal Affective State Analysis (2023JG277)", based mainly on this topic, a behavioural prediction study for online teaching and learning is conducted by combining viewpoint summaries of teacher and student adaptive interaction behavioural events, propensity analysis and accurate modelling of online behavioural trajectories.

5.2024 Shenzhen Polytechnic University Quality Engineering Project "Research on Classroom Scene Understanding and Behavior Analysis Method Based on Multimodal Attention Mechanisms (7024310268)", in this study, a scene classification model based on the attention mechanism is proposed, theoretically validated and functionally tested in text.

6.2024 Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project of the Chinese Society of Higher Education "Research on the Analysis of Teaching and Learning Deep Interaction Characteristics in Smart Classroom Environment Supported by Multimodal Data (24XH0407)", the definition and formal representation of the elements of teaching and learning activities in a smart classroom were investigated in that study based on automated quizzes, which were tested and validated in this paper.

4. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:

“This work is partially supported by 2025 Key Research Project of Shenzhen Polytechnic University "Research on Key Methods for Analysis and Prediction of Social Behaviour of Specific Characters on Multimodal Big Data (6025310008K)", 2024 Guangdong Province Education Science Planning Project (Higher Education Special Project) "Research on Smart Classroom Teaching Behavior Analysis Methods Based on Scene Semantic Understanding and Deep Learning Characteristic Representation (2024GXJK766)", 2023 Guangdong Provincial Higher Vocational Education Teaching Reform Research and Practice Project "Research on Online Teaching Quality Evaluation Method Based on Multimodal Affective State Analysis (2023JG277)", 2024 Shenzhen Polytechnic University Quality Engineering Project "Research on Classroom Scene Understanding and Behavior Analysis Method Based on Multimodal Attention Mechanisms (7024310268)", 2024 Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project of the Chinese Society of Higher Education "Research on the Analysis of Teaching and Learning Deep Interaction Characteristics in Smart Classroom Environment Supported by Multimodal Data (24XH0407)", 2023 Shenzhen Education Science Planning Project"Research on the Evolutionary Mechanism and Intervention of Interpersonal Relationships among College Students Driven by Multimodal Data (rgzn23003)".

Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement.

Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

A: Funding Disclaimer: No additional external funding was received for this study, and all research was conducted on the following six topics.

1.2025 Guangdong Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project "Research on the Synergistic Evolutionary Mechanisms of the Governance System of Colleges and Universities and the Development of Students’ Socio-emotional Competence: Based on Multimodal Learning Analysis (GD25CJY29)".

2.2025 Key Research Project of Shenzhen Polytechnic University "Research on Key Methods for Analysis and Prediction of Social Behaviour of Specific Characters on Multimodal Big Data (6025310008K)".

3.2024 Guangdong Province Education Science Planning Project (Higher Education Special Project) "Research on Smart Classroom Teaching Behavior Analysis Methods Based on Scene Semantic Understanding and Deep Learning Characteristic Representation (2024GXJK766)".

4.2023 Guangdong Provincial Higher Vocational Education Teaching Reform Research and Practice Project "Research on Online Teaching Quality Evaluation Method Based on Multimodal Affective State Analysis (2023JG277)".

5.2024 Shenzhen Polytechnic University Quality Engineering Project "Research on Classroom Scene Understanding and Behavior Analysis Method Based on Multimodal Attention Mechanisms (7024310268)".

6.2024 Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project of the Chinese Society of Higher Education "Research on the Analysis of Teaching and Learning Deep Interaction Characteristics in Smart Classroom Environment Supported by Multimodal Data (24XH0407)".

5. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition).

For example, authors should submit the following data:

- The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported;

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- The points extracted from images for analysis.

Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study.

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If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.

A: The data and code applied in this paper uses only a portion of the data in the dataset, which can be accessed on request at https://github.com/hitlujin0808/education-Q-A

6. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager.

A: The ORCIDs of the first and corresponding authors of this paper are registered, including the ORCID of JinLu (first author) is 0009-0004-5686-3654, and the ORCID of JiLi (corresponding author) is 0009-0003-3412-5493.

7. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 1, 3, 7, 8 and 9 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure.

A: As revised, images 1, 3, 7, 8, and 9 are associated in the article with specific descriptions of their content.

8. Please upload a copy of Figure 4, to which you refer in your text on page 19 in PDF submission. If the figure is no longer to be included as part of the submission please remove all reference to it within the text.

A: As a result of the revision, figure 4 has been deleted and the presentation in the text has been adjusted and optimized accordingly.

9. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

A: A total of seven tables are shown in this paper, and with some modifications, tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 have been correlated in the text with corresponding descriptions.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In summary, this article is interesting and offers valuable findings in terms of both theoretical knowledge and practical application. However, there are several weaknesses that need to be addressed to enhance the overall quality of the article. Language errors are evident, and the writing style lacks consistency, particularly in the labelling of tables and figures. Some labels use lowercase letters while others capitalize each word, which disrupts uniformity. Additionally, the labels for Figures 1, 2, and 3 are unclear, and the colours used are not appropriate for academic writing.

A: Thank you for your valuable comments. Based on your suggestions, targeted changes have been made to the text as follows.

1.Grammatical issues in the text have been optimized, as detailed in red.

2.The formatting of all images and figure captions has been standardized in accordance with the journal's requirements.

3.Optimized description, title and colour scheme of images 1, 2, 3.

The font used throughout the article is also inconsistent across the main text, references, and figure labels. For instance, the citation for “Figure 4” in the text does not follow a consistent formatting style. Moreover, it is recommended that Figure 4 be converted into a tab

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Journal Requirements:

1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

A� We will carry out the paper revision work in strict accordance with the requirements.

2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

A� Some references in the references have been replaced according to the requirements of the journal to enhance the accuracy of the citation. In addition, the DOI of the arXiv paper is supplemented to facilitate the paper query.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In general, the author has addressed the comments and made appropriate improvements accordingly. There is a noticeable improvement in the overall quality of the writing, reflecting the author’s effort to enhance clarity and coherence

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

Reviewer #2: The revised manuscript demonstrates significant improvements and adequately addresses all comments raised in the previous review round. The integration of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and LLM-based Code Interpreters is well-motivated and technically justified. The experimental design is clear, and the four comparative configurations are now explicitly outlined early in the methodology section, enhancing reader comprehension.

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

The addition of the system architecture diagram (Figure 1) helps visualize the interaction between RAG, the Code Interpreter, and the LLM, which strengthens the conceptual clarity. The statistical significance tests introduced in Section 5.6.5 provide rigor to the performance claims, and the results in Table 8 confirm the robustness of the findings.

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

The authors have also improved reproducibility and transparency by sharing the implementation code via GitHub and including a detailed discussion of error handling within the sandboxed execution environment. The inclusion of a Chain-of-Thought example and illustrative failure cases further enriches the manuscript, offering practical insights into system behavior.

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

Finally, the newly added discussion on ethical concerns, covering bias, misinformation, and over-reliance, adds valuable depth and relevance, especially for educational applications of LLMs.

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

The manuscript is now clearly written, technically sound, and methodologically rigorous. I believe it is suitable for publication in its current form.

A�Thank you again for your hard work, and we will continue to learn your valuable opinions and improve the quality of the paper.

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Muralidhar Kurni, Ph.D., PostDoc.

A� We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewers for their hard work.

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Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

A�Thank you for your suggestions. I shall carefully review the reviewers' comments regarding the references and promptly make the necessary improvements.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. All references have been checked and are indeed articles from the database.

Comments from the Editorial Office:

In the previous decision letter, the PLOS One Editorial Office requested that you address the following points, which remain unaddressed. Please give further attention to these requirements before submitting a revised manuscript and response document:

1) We thank you for providing a link to the repository from which the code underpinning this study can be freely accessed (https://github.com/hitlujin0808/education-Q-A). We note that this link has been provided in your Response to Reviewers file, but does not appear to have been included in your manuscript text. Please revise your manuscript text to include this link.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The code link has been added at the end of the paper.

2) We note that the documentation for the code in the repository you have linked is provided in a language other than English. Because PLOS One is an international journal published in English, we kindly ask that you update the documentation in this repository to include translation into English. This is to ensure that your study complies with the PLOS One policy on code sharing, which states that you are encouraged to share your code 'in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse' (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-software-and-code-sharing#loc-sharing-code).

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The explanatory notes for the code have now been fully converted into English.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

A�Thank you for your support.

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: Yes

A�Thank you for your support.

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: COMMENTS.

SO FAR ONLY THOSE COMMENTS HAVE SYSTEM ERROR!

PAGE 11_ 1. Introduction

The educational question-answering systemError! Reference source not found. is playing an increasingly important role in modern education.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 1&2.

PAGE 12_ However, despite their excellence in text generation and comprehension, LLMs still face limitations in handling complex reasoning and mathematical calculations, and they are susceptible to the “hallucination[8]” problem, where the model may generate incorrect answers that do not align with actual knowledge, posing challenges to the accuracy and reliability of the educational systemError! Reference source not found..

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 8.

To address these challenges in current educational question-answering systems, this study proposes a new LLM-based educational question-answering system that combines RetrievalAugmented Generation[9][11]Error! Reference source not found. (RAG) and LLM Code Interpreter[12][14][15][16].

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 10&11.

PAGES 14_ 2 Related works

2.1 Knowledge Base Question Answering Systems (KBQA)

Past educational question answering systems primarily relied on Knowledge Base Question Answering Systems[20][21]Error! Reference source not found.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 20&21.

PAGES15_ Second, methods based on structured knowledge bases still face considerable challenges in dealing with the diversity and complexity of natural languageError! Reference source not found..

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 22.

PAGES 16_ it may still generate inaccurate or erroneous results when confronted with tasks that require multi-step calculations or precise answersError! Reference source not found..

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 32.

PAGES 16_2.3 Large Language Models (LLMs) and Code Interpreters

To address the limitations of LLMs in reasoning and computation, researchers have gradually introduced the Code Interpreter component[16][32]. A Code Interpreter is a tool that can generate and execute code, allowing it to handle complex tasks such as mathematical operations[34], data manipulation[35], and logical reasoningError! Reference source not found.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 36.

PAGES 18_ 4. Textbook Question Answering (TQA)

The TQAError! Reference source not found. dataset comes from high school science textbooks and includes 1,076 course contents from life sciences, Earth sciences, and physical sciences.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 41.

PAGES 21_ 4.4 Implementation Details of the RAG Retrieval Module

The RAG mechanism was implemented using the following approach, including knowledge base construction, retrieval and text selection, as well as fusion and input. The knowledge base was constructed by integrating publicly available text sources, such as Wikipedia excerpts, popular science websites, and digitized versions of various textbooks in both Chinese and English to ensure

linguistic consistency in retrieval. The original text was segmented into sentences or paragraphs, and vector-based retrieval techniquesError! Reference source not found. (e.g., Faiss or Milvus) were used to index the text

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 46.

PAGES 22_ 4.6 Prompt Engineering

To maximize the synergistic effects of the LLM, RAG, and Code Interpreter components, careful prompt engineering techniques[44][45]Error! Reference source not found. were employed.

A�Thank you for your suggestion. The issue has been resolved by replacing the reference 45&46&49.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has undergone substantial improvement in both clarity and methodological rigor compared to earlier versions.

A�Thank you for your support.

The integration of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and LLM-based Code Interpreters is well-motivated, technically justified, and convincingly demonstrated across diverse educational datasets.

A�Thank you for your support.

The addition of the system architecture diagram, statistical significance testing, and error analysis has strengthened the scientific quality and credibility of the work.

A�Thank you for your support.

Sharing the implementation code via GitHub enhances transparency, reproducibility, and the practical applicability of the study.

A�Thank you for your support.

The discussion of ethical considerations—bias, misinformation, and over-reliance—is highly relevant and adds value to the paper, especially in educational contexts.

A�Thank you for your support.

The writing is clear, coherent, and presented in standard English, making the manuscript accessible to a broad readership.

A�Thank you for your support.

Overall, the research is technically sound, the data support the conclusions, and the paper is suitable for publication in its current form.

A�Thank you for your support.

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

A�Thank you for your support.

Reviewer #2: Yes: Muralidhar Kurni

A�Thank you for your support.

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