Organizers

• Adish Singla: Instructor

Timeline and updates

• Until 12 April 2023: Register for the seminar course at https://seminars.cs.uni-saarland.de.
• 14 April 2023: We have a new mailing list for the course. To reach out to organizers/tutors, you should send an email to ai4proged-s23-tutors@mpi-sws.org (instead of contacting via individual emails).
• 20 April 2023: Paper assignments for reading and writing reports are finalized by this date. Each student is assigned 6 papers for which they will be writing reports. The list of papers is provided below, and each student has the same set of papers.
• Until 10 May 2023: After being allocated a slot in the seminar, you need to register for the seminar course examination in the LSF at Saarland University. You must register for the seminar course examination by 10 May 2023; this is also the deadline to withdraw by emailing us.
• 10 May 2023: Reports for the first three papers (#1, #2, #3) are due.
• 31 May 2023: Reports for the next three papers (#4, #5, #6) are due.
• 07 June 2023: Project proposals are due by this date.
• 20 June 2023: Project details will be finalized by this date.
• 20 Aug 2023: Project report and code are due.
• Between 28 Aug to 15 Sep 2023: Final presentations will take place. The exact dates will be finalized in discussion with enrolled students. Slides will be due before the presentation date.

Course structure

The course consists of three main components as follows: (i) research papers, (ii) project, and (iii) final presentation. Each component carries one-third of the final score. There will be no weekly classes. You can reach out to us anytime by sending an email to ai4proged-s23-tutors@mpi-sws.org. If needed, the tutors will arrange specific meeting times during the semester — further information will be communicated to students via emails as we move along in the semester.

Reading research papers and writing reports

• Each student has to write reports for a total of 6 papers. The list of papers is provided below.
• For each paper, you will have to write a two-page report. The timeline for report submissions is listed above.
• Each report should be submitted as a PDF file by sending an email to ai4proged-s23-tutors@mpi-sws.org. You should name your PDF files as lastname_paper#.pdf (e.g., lastname_paper1.pdf, lastname_paper2.pdf, lastname_paper3.pdf, and so on).
• Reports should be written in latex using NeurIPS style files.
  • https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2021/PaperInformation/StyleFiles.
  • You should use the option \usepackage[preprint]{neurips_2021} (Non-anonymous preprints).
  • The report should include the paper title, the paper number (indexed from 1 to 6), and your full name at the top.
• Structure the report into three sections as follows:
  • Write down a review of the paper, including (a) a short summary of the paper, (b) a discussion on how the paper extends state of the art, and (c) the main strengths of the paper.
  • Write down the main weaknesses of the paper and discuss how this paper could be improved.
  • Write down your ideas on how you would like to extend the techniques and results in the paper. If you wish, you could also use these ideas to pursue as part of your project.
• These reports will correspond to one-third of the final score.

Project

• The project will be centered around the theme of AI for programming education. Students will have the freedom to pursue a project of their choice. To begin, each student will submit project proposals; the timeline for proposal submissions is listed above. The project could be related to the seminar papers, or it could also be new directions you are most excited about.
• Based on your project proposals and discussions with tutors, a concrete project will be picked.
• You will have to submit a report and executable code for the project. Each student will work on the project separately (no teams).
• The project will correspond to one-third of the final score.

Presentations

• You will have to prepare a presentation of 20 mins. Your presentation will be based on the project, along with any relevant papers related to your project.
• At the end of the semester, you will give a final presentation. We will block about 8 hours of time for the presentations. The exact dates will be finalized in discussion with enrolled students.
• The slides and presentation will correspond to one-third of the final score.
• Attendance at the final presentations will be mandatory.

List of research papers

1. A Feasibility Study of Using Automated Program Repair for Introductory Programming Assignments
   by J. Yi, U. Z. Ahmed, A. Karkare, S. H. Tan, A. Roychoudhury (ESEC-FSE 2017).
2. Zero-shot Learning of Hint Policy via Reinforcement Learning and Program Synthesis
   by A. Efremov, A. Ghosh, A. Singla (EDM 2020).
3. Generating High-Precision Feedback for Programming Syntax Errors using Large Language Models
   by T. Phung, J. Cambronero, S. Gulwani, T. Kohn, R. Majumdar, A. Singla, G. Soares (EDM 2023).
4. Synthesizing Tasks for Block-based Programming
   by U. Z. Ahmed, M. Christakis, A. Efremov, N. Fernandez, A. Ghosh, A. Roychoudhury, A. Singla (NeurIPS 2020).
5. Adaptive Scaffolding in Block-based Programming via Synthesizing New Tasks as Pop Quizzes
   by A. Ghosh, S. Tschiatschek, S. Devlin, A. Singla (AIED 2022).
6. Automatic Generation of Programming Exercises and Code Explanations Using Large Language Models
   by S. Sarsa, P. Denny, A. Hellas, J. Leinonen (ICER 2022).