Tutorial 102: Teaching Coding in the Age of AI: A Hands-on Tutorial on Process Feedback
As AI-powered resources are becoming easily accessible for students, CS1 instructors seek strategies and tools to cultivate independent thinking skills and academic integrity in students. Irrespective of the level of a student’s AI usage, the key to effective learning lies in the student’s process undertaken to produce code or reach their conclusions. Consequently, students require coding platforms that provide insight into their working process, including their process of AI usage. This tutorial will introduce Process Feedback, an innovative and free online compiler designed to highlight students’ coding processes making it easier to understand the reasons behind their struggles or successes with coding tasks. When students code in the compiler, they see their process in the form of several quantitative summaries and visualizations including the total time taken to complete the task, playback of the entire coding journey, breaks taken during the coding, typing fluency, copy-paste events, time spent on each code block, code execution history, and AI usage history. Turning the coding process data into quantitative summaries and interactive charts, the platform encourages students to engage in reflection and self-learning. The session will also explore the strategies and best practices for integrating such tools into classrooms and will conclude with an examination of case studies and research findings to learn how implementing process-oriented tools can enhance learning outcomes and make grading easier.