Evaluating LLMs for Answering Student Questions in Introductory Programming Courses
The rapid emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) presents both opportunities and challenges for programming education. While students increasingly use generative AI tools, direct access often hinders the learning process by providing complete solutions rather than pedagogical hints. Concurrently, educators face significant workload and scalability challenges when providing timely, personalized feedback. This study investigates the capabilities of LLMs to safely and effectively assist educators in answering student questions within a CS1 programming course. To achieve this, we established a rigorous, reproducible evaluation process by curating a benchmark dataset of 170 authentic studen...
| Authors | Thomas Van Mullem, Bart Mesuere, Peter Dawyndt |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 30 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 March 2026 |
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