Work

CS1 in the Age of GenAI: Affordance Dissolution and Assessment Governance

Type: article

Abstract: Forty-five percent of students who earned top grades on weekly programming exercises scored zero on a monitored final exam. We see this as a sign of a deeper change: generative AI (GenAI) breaks the old assumption that finished coursework shows learning. Using affordance theory and validity theory, we name this change affordance dissolution and test it with three kinds of evidence from three Finnish introductory programming (CS1) courses: grades from over 1,000 students, 883 paired student-and-AI code submissions, and surveys of 602 students. When one course added exam monitoring, top grades fell from 73% to 24%. Two student groups at the same university also described their AI use in clearly different ways. Rules alone cannot undo this change, so we outline how institutions can redesign assessment and what future research is needed.

Source: Journal of the Association for Information Systems

Authors: Parkkila, Janne, Matveinen, Mika, Nikula, Uolevi

Institutions: Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology, Karelia University of Applied Sciences

Language: English

Topic: Teaching and Learning Programming

Subfield: Computer Science Applications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W7222989116

Cites: 10

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Related to: 9