Research seminars
We host free online seminars on current computing education research topics. Speakers from around the world present their work in the field.
This is your opportunity to learn from the latest research insights, make connections with fellow educators and researchers, and take part in discussions.
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Join an upcoming seminar session
Our 2024 seminar series is on the theme of teaching programming (with or without AI). In this series, we explore the latest research on how teachers can best support school-age learners to develop their programming skills.
Seminars take place on the first Tuesday of each month at 17:00–18:30 GMT / 12:00–13:30 ET / 9:00–10:30 PT / 18:00–19:30 CET.
12 November: Nicholas Gardella (University of Virginia)
Performance, workload, emotion, and self-efficacy of novice programmers
This seminar will explore how artificial intelligence-driven development environments (AIDEs), like GitHub Copilot, impact novice programmers in time-sensitive situations. A within-subjects study was conducted with seventeen participants to examine the effects of using AIDEs on programming performance, workload, emotion, and self-efficacy. The findings revealed that AIDEs significantly enhanced coding efficiency and reduced mental effort, although there were no direct effects on emotion or self-efficacy. However, as participants gained more experience using the AIDE, their performance improved, and their self-efficacy followed. This seminar will discuss the implications of these findings for integrating AIDEs into computer science education, emphasising the importance of practice with AI to build proficiency and confidence.
Nicholas Gardella, MEng, is a PhD candidate in Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia. His dissertation research focuses on understanding human interactions with artificial intelligence-based code generators to inform responsible adoption in computer science education.
10 December: Leo Porter (UC San Diego)
Integrating generative AI with introductory programming
It's clear that many computing courses will need to change in response to the challenges and opportunities of generative AI. Research on what these changes will look like is ongoing, with some areas of focus better understood than others. For example, the research community has made considerable progress in using generative AI as tutors, but we know much less about generative AI’s impact on student learning and how learning outcomes should change. This seminar will briefly summarise the main areas of ongoing research related to generative AI. Next, it will describe the design goals and findings emerging from the Computing Education Research Laboratory’s work at UC San Diego to create an introductory programming course for majors and non-majors that fully incorporates generative AI into the learning goals of the course. The session will close with a discussion of how faculty can adopt similar courses, areas for innovation, and the next steps for the community.
Leo Porter is a Professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego interested in computer science education research and computer architecture. Leo co-founded the Computing Education Research Laboratory, which is dedicated to better understanding how students learn computing and creating instructional environments where a diverse group of students can succeed.
Catch up on previous seminars
We have had the privilege to learn from many incredible researchers since we started our seminars in 2020, and we're excited to share their talks with you. Explore the archives below to watch and read about past seminars.
Seminar recordings
We make the seminar talks available to watch after they take place. Discover recordings from our current and previous series on programming; primary (K–5) computing; cross-disciplinary computing; artificial intelligence; and equity, diversity and inclusion.
Summaries on the blog
After each seminar, we publish a short blog to sum up some of its main take-aways and share the video recording of the speaker's talk. Each blog highlights how the seminar applies to teachers' classroom practice. Browse the archive of seminar blogs.