Earning Open Badges instead of regular grades and credits can be a motivating factor for high-performing students in terms of attending classes and completing assignments in extracurricular courses, but to what extent? And for what student profiles? To tackle these questions, we conducted a quantitative study with high-performing students. Each…

Large Language Model (LLM) artificial intelligence tools present a unique challenge for educators who teach programming languages. While LLMs like ChatGPT have been well documented for their ability to complete exams and create prose, there is a noticeable lack of research into their ability to solve problems using high-level programming…

Generative AI is a disruptive technology that has the potential to transform many aspects of how computer science is taught. Like previous innovations such as high-level programming languages and block-based programming languages, generative AI lowers the technical expertise necessary to create working programs, bringing the power of computation…

The current educational system relies heavily on manual grading, posing challenges such as delayed feedback and grading inaccuracies. Automated grading tools (AGTs) offer solutions but come with limitations. To address this, "GRAD-AI" is introduced, an advanced AGT that combines automation with teacher involvement for precise grading,…

In the wake of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, computer programming has become a foundational competency across engineering disciplines. Yet engineering students often resist the notion that computer programming is a skill relevant to their future profession. Here are presented two activities aimed at supporting the early development…

"Stochastic programs," which are programs that produce probabilistic output, are a pivotal paradigm in various areas of CS education from introductory programming to machine learning and data science. Despite their importance, the problem of automatically grading such programs remains surprisingly unexplored. In this paper, we formalize…

This paper introduces a teaching process to develop students' problem-solving and programming efficacy in an introductory computer programming course. The proposed teaching practice provides step-by-step guidelines on using worked-out examples of code to demonstrate the applications of programming concepts. These coding demonstrations explicitly…

Automatic program repair (APR) tools are valuable for students to assist them with debugging tasks since program repair captures the code modification to make a buggy program pass the given test-suite. However, the process of manually generating catalogs of code modifications is intricate and time-consuming. This article proposes contextual error…

Background and Context: Source code plagiarism is a common occurrence in undergraduate computer science education. Many source code plagiarism detection tools have been proposed to address this problem. However, such tools do not identify plagiarism, nor suggest what assignment submissions are suspicious of plagiarism. Source code plagiarism…

Knowledge components (KCs) have many applications. In computing education, knowing the demonstration of specific KCs has been challenging. This paper introduces an entirely data-driven approach for: (1) discovering KCs; and (2) demonstrating KCs, using students' actual code submissions. Our system is based on two expected properties of KCs: (1)…

The author describes an assignment in an undergraduate game theory course in which students work together in class to develop a computer algorithm to identify Nash equilibria. This assignment builds basic computer science skills while applying game theory knowledge to real-world situations. Students work as a team to delineate the steps and write…

Knowledge tracing (KT) models are a popular approach for predicting students' future performance at practice problems using their prior attempts. Though many innovations have been made in KT, most models including the state-of-the-art Deep KT (DKT) mainly leverage each student's response either as correct or incorrect, ignoring its content. In…

For the last decades, programming courses are being taught in nearly every educational sector. Students are now more likely to use an e-learning platform compared to traditional system because of lower internet costs, remote access, and faster communication facilities. For a programming course studied in both manual and e-learning platforms,…

Students face several difficulties in introductory programming courses (CS1), often leading to high dropout rates, student demotivation, and lack of interest. The literature has indicated that the adequate use of gamification might improve learning in several domains, including CS1. However, the understanding of which (and how) factors influence…

We report on a study in which we examined the work habits of six students who agreed to use do not disturb on their phone while working on programming assignments. Two students tried do not disturb, and quickly quit using it. Three out of four remaining student participants were more productive while using do not disturb when working on their…