Publications (47)
Desirable Characteristics for AI Teaching Assistants in Programming Education
Paul Denny, Stephen MacNeil, Jaromir Savelka +2
Providing timely and personalized feedback to large numbers of students is a long-standing challenge in programming courses. Relying on human teaching assistants (TAs) has been ext…
Decoding Logic Errors: A Comparative Study on Bug Detection by Students and Large Language Models
Stephen MacNeil, Paul Denny, Andrew Tran +5
Identifying and resolving logic errors can be one of the most frustrating challenges for novices programmers. Unlike syntax errors, for which a compiler or interpreter can issue a…
Exploring Student Behaviors and Motivations using AI TAs with Optional Guardrails
Amanpreet Kapoor, Marc Diaz, Stephen MacNeil +2
AI-powered chatbots and digital teaching assistants (AI TAs) are gaining popularity in programming education, offering students timely and personalized feedback. Despite their pote…
WIP: Identifying Tutorial Affordances for Interdisciplinary Learning Environments
Hannah Kim, Sergei L. Kosakovsky Pond, Stephen MacNeil
This work-in-progress research paper explores the effectiveness of tutorials in interdisciplinary learning environments, specifically focusing on bioinformatics. Tutorials are typi…
The Role of Generative AI in Software Student CollaborAItion
Natalie Kiesler, Jacqueline Smith, Juho Leinonen +3
Collaboration is a crucial part of computing education. The increase in AI capabilities over the last couple of years is bound to profoundly affect all aspects of systems and softw…
Exploring the Value of Diverse LLM Explanations in Introductory Programming
Seth Bernstein, Paul Denny, Juho Leinonen +4
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown the potential to generate code explanations that surpass those of peers in quality, offering promising opportunities for computer science ed…