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Replication research is rare in CS education. For this reason, it is often unclear to what extent our findings generalize beyond the context of their generation. The present paper is a replication and extension of Achievement Goal Theory research on CS1 students. Achievement goals are cognitive representations of desired competence (e.g., topic mastery, outperforming peers) in achievement settings, and can predict outcomes such as grades and interest. We study achievement goals and their effects on CS1 students at six institutions in four countries. Broad patterns are maintained --- mastery goals are beneficial while appearance goals are not --- but our data additionally admits fine-grained analyses that nuance these findings. In particular, students' motivations for goal pursuit can clarify relationships between performance goals and outcomes.
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This content will become publicly available on February 12, 2026
Achievement Goals in CS1-LLM
Introduction: The emergence and widespread adoption of generative AI (GenAI) chatbots such as ChatGPT, and programming assistants such as GitHub Copilot, have radically redefined the landscape of programming education. This calls for replication of studies and reexamination of findings from pre-GenAI CS contexts to understand the impact on students. Objectives: Achievement Goals are well studied in computing education and can be predictive of student interest and exam performance. The objective in this study is to compare findings from prior achievement goal studies in CS1 courses with new CS1 courses that emphasize the use of human-GenAI collaborative coding. Methods: In a CS1 course that integrates GenAI, we use linear regression to explore the relationship between achievement goals and prior experience on student interest, exam performance, and perceptions of GenAI. Results: As with prior findings in traditional CS1 classes, Mastery goals are correlated with interest in computing. Contradicting prior CS1 findings, normative goals are correlated with exam scores. Normative and mastery goals correlate with students’ perceptions of learning with GenAI. Mastery goals weakly correlate with reading and testing code output from GenAI.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2417374
- PAR ID:
- 10635647
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400714252
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 144 to 153
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Brisbane Australia
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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