Is generative AI making students more wise and productive or is it encouraging lazy learners to cut too many corners? Join us on Monday 7th July at 2pm BST (UTC+1) to discuss a recently published review paper investigating the effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning by Jin Wang and Wenxiang Fan at Hangzhou Normal University in China [1]. From the abstract: The authors of the paper have been invited to join us to give a lightning talk summary.

Why do we even bother? What (exactly) is the point? In this age of AI why would anyone need to learn about Computing? What value does it add, what skills do students learn and what knowledge do students actually need to develop?

There is no “I” in Team, but there is an “I” in University. Teamwork is a core skill taught in many Computing degrees. How can instructors help students improve their teamwork skills though collaborative projects?

Our next meeting will be at Computing Education Practice (CEP) in Durham on 7th January, if you’re joining us, we’ll see you there. cepconference.webspace.durham.ac.uk If you can’t make it to Durham this year (registration closed last week), our next UK ACM SIGCSE journal club meeting is on the first Monday in February, that’s Monday 3rd February at 2pm GMT (UTC+1). What paper should we discuss?

Large Language Models (LLMs) can help explain programming error messages and these explanations tend to improve as the models they are based on include more source code. However, it is unknown to what extent novice programmers are able to effectively utilise these automatically generated explanations to debug their programs, with tools like GitHub CoPilot and ChatGPT. Join us to discuss a paper on this by Eddie Antonio Santos and Brett Becker.

Students of programming are often encouraged to use AI assistants with little consideration for their perceptions and preferences. How do students perceptions influence their usage of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) in undergraduate programming courses? How does the use of tools like ChatGPT and GitHub CoPilot relate to students self-belief in their own programming abilities?

We are deeply saddened to hear of Brett Becker‘s tragic passing. Brett has been a regular speaker, supporter and attendee at SIGCSE journal club since we started in 2020 and we’ve have often discussed Brett’s papers at SIGCSE journal club. We’d planned to discuss another one of Brett’s papers at our October meetup but we’ve postponed that to a later date, in light of his passing.

Journal club is taking a break for August, we’ll be back in September for the United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education Research conference (UKICER.com), 5th & 6th of September in Manchester.

Many employers struggle to recruit and retain software engineers with the skills needed to contribute to the modern workplace. What do employers and educators need to do to address this wicked problem? Join us to discuss the broken pipeline problem and its potential solutions in cybersecurity and beyond on Monday 1st July at 2pm BST.

Teamwork makes the dream work, or so the cliché goes. So how do you assess students ability to work together towards shared goals? Teaching students to collaborate in teams (agile or otherwise) is notoriously problematic. Dream work can rapidly descend into a nightmare struggle to motivate the free-riders while restraining the self-appointed dictators. Who gets the credit for what? What did the team agree on exactly?

Employers often love academic group projects while students often loathe them. How can Agile group projects be used to develop students skills, both hard technical skills and softer people skills?