Teaching and Learning Programming

Latest papers

• Feedback Without the Wait: Piloting a Generative AI Practice Platform in a Large Maths Class

  Lili Chen, Gavin Buskes, Yuxin Ren, Chin Tong Leong · 2 October 2026

  Timely and specific feedback is one of the strongest influences on student learning, yet it is difficult to sustain in large electrical engineering classes where the ratio of students to demonstrators is high and a learner who is stuck may wait days to find out why an approach was wrong. Generative …

• Understanding Student Use of Large Language Models Across Computer Science Subfields

  Sehrish Basir Nizamani, Yoonje Lee, Nikitha Donekal Chandrashekar, Margaret Ellis, Naren Ramakrishnan · 2 October 2026

  This research full paper examines how undergraduate students use large language models (LLMs) across computer science subfields. As LLMs become increasingly integrated into computing education, understanding how their use varies across technical and pedagogical contexts is essential for designing ef…

• Virtual Global Collaboration in Data Analytics and Machine Learning Education: A Mixed-Methods Study of Asynchronous Cross-Border Teamwork

  Sehrish Basir Nizamani, Saad Nizamani, Khyati Goyal, Sarwat Nizamani, Zannah Zeiw · 2 October 2026

  This innovative practice full paper examines a structured Virtual Global Collaboration (VGC) activity between undergraduate computing courses in the United States and Pakistan. The project was designed to support technical and intercultural skill development through asynchronous international teamwo…

• Making the Invisible Visible: A Framework for Reflective AI Use in Software Engineering Education

  Ali Shakiba, Thomas Chaffey · 29 September 2026

  Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly embedded in software engineering education, supporting activities such as requirements development, design exploration, documentation, and prototyping. However, educators often have visibility only into final artefacts, with limited insight into how students eva…

• Cognitive Skills in the Age of AI: Computing Students and Experts Perceptions

  Neha Rani, Vu Minh Anh Le, Austin M. Spangler, Erta Cenko · 28 September 2026

  AI is becoming increasingly integrated into daily workflows, especially in computing. We are gradually shifting towards an AI-rich future, an impending yet unknown one. One important emerging concern is whether we are accordingly preparing our future computing workforce. Further, we need to know wha…

• Guardrails or Roadblocks? Effects of Pedagogical Style and Context Awareness in AI Teaching Assistants for Programming

  Madeleine Eastwood, Harshith Narne, Joseph Hilby, Paul Denny, Ashish Aggarwal, Amanpreet Kapoor · 25 September 2026

  AI teaching assistants (AI TAs) backed by large language models (LLMs) and pedagogical guardrails are increasingly being integrated into programming courses, providing students with scalable access to hints, conceptual explanations, and code-level feedback. However, guardrails may also create fricti…

• Beyond Simple Input-Output Assessment Tasks: Leveraging Automated Programming Assessment for Non-Trivial Courses

  Artur Jordao · 25 September 2026

  The public visibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly, driven by the positive impact of its applications across diverse fields of knowledge. In this new chapter, courses that cover the foundations of AI and machine learning become essential for understanding their role and potenti…

• Make it SewSimple: Navigating UK Curriculum and Classroom Practice in Secondary Computing Education with E-textiles

  Yifan Feng, Hanlin Zhang, Yishan Du, Weihong Tang, Jennifer A. Rode, Bea Wohl · 25 September 2026

  This paper explores the potential of integrating e-textiles as part of the approach to delivering computing in UK secondary schools. As one of the few UK-based exploratory studies of teachers experiences, it investigates how e-textile platforms such as the SewSimple maker kit and the BBC micro:bit c…

• Generative AI May Reinforce Social Biases in Software Engineering Education

  Erfan Entezami, Andrew Lan, Madeline Endres · 25 September 2026

  Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly being deployed across a wide range of real-world applications. Without careful evaluation, reliance on these systems can have unintended consequences, such as reinforcement of stereotypes and amplification of social biases. Such risks are pa…

• Drafter: A Python Library for Full-Stack Web Development in CS1

  Austin Cory Bart, Nazim Karaca · 25 September 2026

  Web applications are increasingly the main way to create user interfaces, and they are often the most common software beginners have encountered. However, web development relies on concepts like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and backend technologies, which are challenges beyond the scope of an introductory…

• AI Can Do Your Homework. Now What? Report from an Online Workshop on Computing Assessment in the Age of Generative AI

  Muhammad Sajjad Akbar, Geoffrey Challen, Fraida Fund, Casey Hopkins, Oscar Karnalim, Kevin Lin, James McGuffee, Shubbhi Taneja, Ranysha Ware · 24 September 2026

  On 28 July 2026, the SIGCSE Virtual 2026 Working Group on computing assessment and generative AI held an open online workshop attended by 73 computing educators. The first hour ran seven strategy rooms, one per approach to adapting (or deliberately preserving) computing assessment in the AI era: ope…

• Teaching Reinforcement Learning and Humanoid Robotics to High-School Students: An Expert-Validated Curriculum Design on a Low-Cost Open Platform

  Yuanzhe Dong, Jie Cao, Shuman Wang · 23 September 2026

  Lower cost open source robots and reinforcement learning (RL) simulation tools create new opportunities for precollege students to engage with contemporary robotics. However, translating a complete research workflow, spanning mechanical assembly, electrical setup, simulation, policy learning, system…

• Removing the Competition from Introductory Competitive Programming: A Backward-Designed, Mastery-Oriented Curriculum Sequence

  Ethan Dickey · 23 September 2026

  Competitive programming courses often inherit the visible features of programming contests -- timed rounds, rankings, penalty systems, and topic lists -- before articulating what novices should learn. This curriculum design case argues that competitive programming tasks and competitive performance a…

• Instructional Governance by Design: A Framework for AI in Computing Education

  Ethan Dickey · 23 September 2026

  As generative AI permeates computing instruction, the emergent design challenge is to configure each tool's pedagogical role, authority, and accountability for the instructional work it performs. We argue for instructional governance by design: governance should be encoded in a teaching tool's inter…

• Observing the Conduct of Systematic Reviews with Generative AI Support: An Experience Report from a Graduate Software Engineering Course

  Danilo Monteiro Ribeiro, Gilberto Sussumu Hida · 23 September 2026

  Context: Secondary studies are fundamental practices in Evidence- Based Software Engineering, but teaching them requires activities that expose students to authentic methodological decisions. Objective: This paper reports an experience in a graduate course in which ten doctoral students in Software …

• Reducing Barriers to Academic Support: Evaluating a Course-Specific RAG System for Addressing Help-Seeking Disparities in Higher Education

  Andy Gray, Jake Hobbs · 21 September 2026

  Access to academic support is a key determinant of student success, yet students experience it unequally: some readily seek help from lecturers or tutors, while others hesitate due to anxiety, fear of judgement, uncertainty about expectations, or low confidence in their understanding. This may be es…

• Your Programming Students' Cognition with ChatGPT: Higher Performance, Lower Retention, and Reduced Ownership

  Christian Bergh, Benjamin Tag, Alexandra Vassar, Jake Renzella · 21 September 2026

  Generative AI can improve students' programming performance, but successful task completion may not reflect what they retain. We examined performance, retention, cognitive load, and ownership in a controlled between-subjects experiment with 59 undergraduate computer science students, 55 were retaine…

• Harnessing Generative UI for Education: Tailored Learning Interactives

  Alisa Kovshov, Anisha Choudhury, Anna Iurchenko, Amy Keeling, Avinatan Hassidim, Ayelet Shasha Evron, Ay\c{c}a \c{C}akmakli, Diana Akrong, Femi Olanubi, Gal Elidan, Ian Li, Ido Lerer, Katherine Chou, Lidan Hackmon, Michal Gordon, Nir Kerem, Niv Efron, Preeti Singh, Rena Levitt, Rotem Yulzary, Shlomi Ben Shimon, Sophie Allweis, Tracey Lee-Joe, Tzvika Stein, Yaniv Carmel, Yael Haramaty, Yishay Mor, Yossi Matias, Yuri Lev · 18 September 2026

  It is well established that students learn best through active engagement, particularly via interactive experiences tied to real-world concepts. Creating such experiences, however, typically requires labor-intensive design, costly development, and continuous teacher guidance to achieve measurably ef…

• Teaching AI, Robotics, & Community: A Hubs-Based K-12 Education Framework for Reaching Rural Schools

  Maxwell J. Jacobson, Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera, Petros Drineas, Yexiang Xue · 17 September 2026

  K-12 robotics and AI education remains difficult to scale, especially in rural regions lacking sustained technical mentorship. Programs like FIRST provide competition pathways and instructional opportunities, but they do not eliminate the need for local programming and robotics expertise. We introdu…

• Finding Common Mistakes In Modelling With Mathematical Formalisms Using LLMs

  Lilian Killich, Marko Schmellenkamp, Fabian Vehlken, Thomas Zeume · 16 September 2026

  Modelling with mathematical formalisms like logical formulas, mathematical equations, or regular expressions is an important yet challenging task for students of computer science and other STEM disciplines. Identifying common mistakes occurring in this context is an important step towards helping st…

• AI literacy over tool design: a mixed-methods study of scaffolded versus unrestricted generative AI in programming education

  Sepinoud Azimi · 16 September 2026

  Generative AI has become a routine resource in programming education, and most institutional responses to it are attempts at control, either by restricting access or by offering students a controlled version of the technology. This paper reports a seven-week mixed-methods pilot study in a master's-l…

• AlgoRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Theoretical Computer Science Education -- A Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Algorithm Analysis and Complexity Theory

  Sushan Adhikari · 15 September 2026

  Teaching abstract theoretical computer science (TCS) concepts such as algorithm analysis and complexity theory is challenging because students must handle formal proofs and asymptotic reasoning that conventional resources rarely explain in an adaptive, on-demand way. We present AlgoRAG, a specialize…

• GitSkills: A Dataset of Agent Skills on GitHub

  Giuseppe Destefanis, Daniel Graziotin, Matteo Vaccargiu, Marco Ortu · 14 September 2026

  An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with instructions for a language-model agent, optionally accompanied by scripts and reference files. The agent loads the skill when it judges that a task matches the skill description. Anthropic introduced the format in October 2025 as an open sp…

• Flawed but Memorable: Student Critical Reception of Interest-Personalized GenAI Analogies in Computing Education

  Seth Bernstein, Naaz Sibia · 9 September 2026

  Motivation: Undergraduate computing students increasingly turn to generative AI (GenAI) tools to understand abstract concepts through analogies. Analogies compare an unfamiliar concept to something familiar, but judging whether the comparison holds requires knowledge of both. GenAI may also embed as…

• Making Gender-Inclusive Practices Actionable: Evaluating a Research-Informed Computing Education Toolkit

  Alina Berry, Susan McKeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany · 4 September 2026

  The persistent gender imbalance in computing remains a global concern, and universities offer a key part of the pipeline to address it. Although research has identified practices that support under-represented student groups, translating this evidence into actionable guidance remains challenging. Th…