Integrating AI Tutors in a Programming Course

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Ma, Iris, Martins, Alberto Krone, Lopes, Cristina Videira
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Ma, Iris
Martins, Alberto Krone
Lopes, Cristina Videira
author_facet Ma, Iris
Martins, Alberto Krone
Lopes, Cristina Videira
contents RAGMan is an LLM-powered tutoring system that can support a variety of course-specific and homework-specific AI tutors. RAGMan leverages Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), as well as strict instructions, to ensure the alignment of the AI tutors' responses. By using RAGMan's AI tutors, students receive assistance with their specific homework assignments without directly obtaining solutions, while also having the ability to ask general programming-related questions. RAGMan was deployed as an optional resource in an introductory programming course with an enrollment of 455 students. It was configured as a set of five homework-specific AI tutors. This paper describes the interactions the students had with the AI tutors, the students' feedback, and a comparative grade analysis. Overall, about half of the students engaged with the AI tutors, and the vast majority of the interactions were legitimate homework questions. When students posed questions within the intended scope, the AI tutors delivered accurate responses 98% of the time. Within the students used AI tutors, 78% reported that the tutors helped their learning. Beyond AI tutors' ability to provide valuable suggestions, students reported appreciating them for fostering a safe learning environment free from judgment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_15718
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Integrating AI Tutors in a Programming Course
Ma, Iris
Martins, Alberto Krone
Lopes, Cristina Videira
Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
Software Engineering
RAGMan is an LLM-powered tutoring system that can support a variety of course-specific and homework-specific AI tutors. RAGMan leverages Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), as well as strict instructions, to ensure the alignment of the AI tutors' responses. By using RAGMan's AI tutors, students receive assistance with their specific homework assignments without directly obtaining solutions, while also having the ability to ask general programming-related questions. RAGMan was deployed as an optional resource in an introductory programming course with an enrollment of 455 students. It was configured as a set of five homework-specific AI tutors. This paper describes the interactions the students had with the AI tutors, the students' feedback, and a comparative grade analysis. Overall, about half of the students engaged with the AI tutors, and the vast majority of the interactions were legitimate homework questions. When students posed questions within the intended scope, the AI tutors delivered accurate responses 98% of the time. Within the students used AI tutors, 78% reported that the tutors helped their learning. Beyond AI tutors' ability to provide valuable suggestions, students reported appreciating them for fostering a safe learning environment free from judgment.
title Integrating AI Tutors in a Programming Course
topic Computers and Society
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15718