The relative effectiveness of reflection either through student generation of contrasting cases or through provided contrasting cases is not well-established for adult learners. This paper presents a classroom study to investigate this comparison in a college level Computer Science (CS) course where groups of students worked collaboratively to…

Collaborative dialogue offers rich insights into students' learning and critical thinking. This is essential for adapting pedagogical agents to students' learning and problem-solving skills in STEM+C settings. While large language models (LLMs) facilitate dynamic pedagogical interactions, potential hallucinations can undermine confidence, trust,…

Aim/Purpose: This paper is part of a multi-case study that aims to test whether generative AI makes an effective coding assistant. Particularly, this work evaluates the ability of two AI chatbots (ChatGPT and Bing Chat) to generate concise computer code, considers ethical issues related to generative AI, and offers suggestions for how to improve…

This study adopted the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to extract learners' needs based on 70,145 reviews from online course designed for software design and development in China and then applied Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to map learners' differentiated needs into quality attributes. Taking national first-class courses as the…

Programming demands a variety of cognitive skills, and mastering these competencies is essential for success in computer science education. The importance of formative feedback is well acknowledged in programming education, and thus, a diverse range of techniques has been proposed to generate and enhance formative feedback for programming…

Background: Over the past few decades, the process and methodology of automatic question generation (AQG) have undergone significant transformations. Recent progress in generative natural language models has opened up new potential in the generation of educational content. Objectives: This paper explores the potential of large language models…

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 approaches tend to rely on prompt engineering techniques in which predefined prompts guide the AI to generate feedback. This can result in rigid and constrained responses…

Background: The recent advent of powerful, exam-passing large language models (LLMs) in public awareness has led to concerns over students cheating, but has also given rise to calls for including or even focusing education on LLMs. There is a perceived urgency to react immediately, as well as claims that AI-based reforms of education will lead to…

SQL compiler error messages are the primary way users receive feedback when they encounter syntax errors or other issues in their SQL queries. Effective error messages can enhance the user experience by providing clear, informative, and actionable feedback. Despite the age of SQL compilers, it still remains largely unclear what contributes to an…

Regular expressions (REs) are often taught to undergraduate computer science majors in the Formal Languages and Automata (FLA) course; they are widely used to implement different software functionalities such as search mechanisms and data validation in diverse fields. Despite their importance, the difficulty of REs has been asserted many times in…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly exploited to promote student engagement. This study combined topic modelling, keyword analysis, trend test and systematic analysis methodologies to analyse AI-supported student engagement (AIsE) studies regarding research keywords and topics, AI roles, AI systems and algorithms, methods and domains,…

It is very important to identify talented students as soon as they are admitted to college so that appropriate resources are provided and allocated to them to optimize and excel in their education. Currently, this process is labor-intensive and time-consuming, as it involves manual reviews of each student's academic record. This raises the…

DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) is a formalism that was introduced in the mid-1970s by Bernard Zeigler, for modeling and analysis of discrete event systems. DEVS is essentially a formal mathematical language for specifying complex systems through models that can be simulated and has been executed in object-oriented software, DEVSJava…

This paper systematically explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) generate explanations of code examples of the type used in intro-to-programming courses. As we show, the nature of code explanations generated by LLMs varies considerably based on the wording of the prompt, the target code examples being explained, the programming language, the…

In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a groundbreaking generative AI chatbot backed by large language models (LLMs). Since then, these models have seen various applications in education, from Socratic tutoring and writing assistance to teacher training and essay scoring. Despite their widespread use among high school and college students in…