activity
20212026
most citedAutomatic Generation of Programming Exercises and Code Explanations using Large Language Models

473 citations · 1.8k across the 57 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

62 papers

cs.CY2026

Correctness, Convergence, and AI-Generated Code Detection: A Longitudinal Study of Student and Large Language Model Code in Introductory Programming

Runlong Ye, Jing Fan, Angela Zavaleta Bernuy +4

Large language models can generate plausible solutions to programming assignments, making it tempting to detect their use by matching student code against a reference bank of gener…

cs.DL2026

Testing Our Foundations: Citation Trends, Errors, and Emerging Hallucinations in the Computing Education Literature

Paul Denny, Gweneth Barbre, Musa Blake +5

Accurate references are foundational to scholarly work, enabling verification, attribution, and systematic review. However, the rapid adoption of large language models has introduc…

cs.HC2026

Pulla: A Parsons Problem Tool for Fine-Grained Behavioral Tracing and Instructor-Facing Problem-Solving Analysis

Daniel Prol, Juho Leinonen, Arto Hellas +2

Existing Parsons problem tools primarily focus on correctness, indicating whether a student solved a problem, but providing limited visibility into the underlying problem-solving p…

cs.SE2026

Mapping the Emerging Curriculum for AI-Assisted Software Engineering via Syllabus Analysis

Francis Geng, Anshul Shah, Mia Chen +5

As Generative AI coding tools reshape professional software development, universities have begun designing courses to prepare students for AI-assisted development workflows. By ana…

cs.CY2026

Say What? Examining Text and Voice Input Modalities for Prompt-Based Programming in Computing Education

Kaitlin Riegel, Yan Cathy Hua, Paul Denny +4

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into computing education, yet nearly all prior research has focused on text-based interactions. As voice-enabled interfaces…

cs.SE2026

When AI Is Wrong on Purpose: How Students Respond to Buggy GenAI Code

Victor-Alexandru Pădurean, Kaitlin Riegel, Alkis Gotovos +6

As Generative AI (GenAI) becomes increasingly central to software development, CS education is integrating prompt-centered workflows where students describe intended program behavi…

cs.CY2026

Understanding Student Perceptions, Mistakes, and Debugging Approaches when Solving Natural Language Programming Tasks

Victor-Alexandru Pădurean, Kaitlin Riegel, Gweneth Barbre +7

Learning to communicate with code-generating AI models is an emerging skill for novice programmers. One recent pedagogical approach, Prompt Problems, has students solve computation…

cs.CY2026

Analyzing the Difficulty of Programming Assignments with Interpretable Knowledge Component Metrics

Tsvetomila Mihaylova, Jing Fan, Bita Akram +4

This research paper examines how Knowledge Components (KCs) - fine-grained concepts or skills required to solve programming tasks - can be used as interpretable signals for underst…

cs.CL2026

Distinguishing Artificial from Authentic: Evaluating LLMs for Detecting LLM-Generated Content

Juho Leinonen, Paul Denny

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used by students to generate natural language responses and program code, there is growing interest in whether LLMs themselves can…

cs.HC2026

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…

cs.HC2026

The Effects of Structured LLM-Generated Feedback on Programming Assignment Performance

Tsvetomila Mihaylova, Evanfiya Logacheva, Arto Hellas +6

When programming students encounter errors in their code, compiler messages or static analysis output often provide limited guidance, particularly for novice programmers. Personali…

cs.AI2026

AI-Generated Slides: Are They Good? Can Students Tell?

Juho Leinonen, Lisa Zhang, Arto Hellas

As generative AI (GenAI) tools become easily accessible, there is promise in using such tools to support instructors. To that end, this paper examines using GenAI to help generate…

cs.AI2026

Retrieval-Augmented Tutoring for Algorithm Tracing and Problem-Solving in AI Education

Mragisha Jain, Tirth Bhatt, Griffin Pitts +6

Students learning algorithms often need support as they interpret traces, debug reasoning errors, and apply procedures across unfamiliar problem instances. In this paper, we presen…

cs.AI2026

Teaching Language Models How to Code Like Learners: Conversational Serialization for Student Simulation

Charles Koutcheme, Juho Leinonen, Arto Hellas

Artificial students -- models that simulate how learners act and respond within educational systems -- are a promising tool for evaluating tutoring strategies and feedback mechanis…

cs.CY2026

The Missing Evaluation Axis: What 10,000 Student Submissions Reveal About AI Tutor Effectiveness

Rose Niousha, Samantha Boatright Smith, Bita Akram +5

Current Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tutoring systems (AI tutors) are primarily evaluated based on the pedagogical quality of their feedback messages. While important, pedago…

cs.HC2026

Personalized Worked Example Generation from Student Code Submissions Using Pattern-based Knowledge Components

Griffin Pitts, Muntasir Hoq, Peter Brusilovsky +4

Adaptive programming practice often relies on fixed libraries of worked examples and practice problems, which require substantial authoring effort and may not correspond well to th…

cs.CL2026

RLearner-LLM: Balancing Logical Grounding and Fluency in Large Language Models via Hybrid Direct Preference Optimization

Qiming Bao, Juho Leinonen, Paul Denny +1

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), the efficient alternative to PPO-based RLHF, falls short on knowledge-intensive generation: standard preference signals from human annotators…

cs.HC2026

Fast and Forgettable: A Controlled Study of Novices' Performance, Learning, Workload, and Emotion in AI-Assisted and Human Pair Programming Paradigms

Nicholas Gardella, James Prather, Juho Leinonen +3

Code-generating Artificial Intelligence has gained popularity within both professional and educational programming settings over the past several years. While research and pedagogy…

cs.CL2026

When Looks Do Not Lie: Discourse Structure Guided In-Context Learning for Faithful Diagram Generation

Evanfiya Logacheva, Arto Hellas, Tsvetomila Mihaylova +3

GenAI is widespread in educational applications; however, it is known to generate content with intrinsic and extrinsic hallucination. We introduce a novel method for ICL diagram ge…

cs.CY2025★ 1 cited

Humanizing Automated Programming Feedback: Fine-Tuning Generative Models with Student-Written Feedback

Victor-Alexandru Pădurean, Tung Phung, Nachiket Kotalwar +4

The growing need for automated and personalized feedback in programming education has led to recent interest in leveraging generative AI for feedback generation. However, current a…

cs.CY2025

Interleaving Natural Language Prompting with Code Editing for Solving Programming Tasks with Generative AI Models

Victor-Alexandru Pădurean, Alkis Gotovos, Ahana Ghosh +5

Modern computing students often rely on both natural-language prompting and manual code editing to solve programming tasks. Yet we still lack a clear understanding of how these two…

cs.CY2025

Narrowing the Gap: Supervised Fine-Tuning of Open-Source LLMs as a Viable Alternative to Proprietary Models for Pedagogical Tools

Lorenzo Lee Solano, Charles Koutcheme, Juho Leinonen +2

Frontier Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini can decipher cryptic compiler errors for novice programmers, but their computational scale, cost, and tendency to over…

cs.HC2025★ 1 cited

SPIRAL integration of generative AI in an undergraduate creative media course: effects on self-efficacy and career outcome expectations

Troy Schotter, Saba Kawas, James Prather +3

Computing education and computing students are rapidly integrating generative AI, but we know relatively little about how different pedagogical strategies for intentionally integra…

cs.HC2025

From Prompts to Propositions: A Logic-Based Lens on Student-LLM Interactions

Ali Alfageeh, Sadegh AlMahdi Kazemi Zarkouei, Daye Nam +9

Background and Context. The increasing integration of large language models (LLMs) in computing education presents an emerging challenge in understanding how students use LLMs and…