This study investigated New Zealand students' views on utilising chatbots and the impact of using ChatGPT or similar chatbots with suggested prompts on the reflective thinking skills of university students. The research was conducted in an introductory computer programming course (COMP102) in the School of Engineering and Computer Science. This introductory course uses a flipped classroom approach. The students were introduced to an approach to use a generative AI-based chatbot as an intervention. The intervention consisted of a brief explanation of chatbot training and utilisation, along with a specifically designed prompt intended to support learning. An example of prompt usage was demonstrated. Students' feedback was collected through two instruments: a Reflective Thinking Scale questionnaire, which measured students' reflective thinking abilities, and an open-ended student guide questionnaire designed to gather qualitative insights into their views and experiences using chatbots. Employing a mixed-methods research approach, we incorporated quantitative (Reflective Thinking Scale questionnaire) and qualitative (open-ended student guide questionnaire) data collection instruments within an experimental pre-test and post-test control group design. The pretest yielded 86 completed responses, while the post-test had 49 participants out of over 400 students enrolled in the course. The pre-test and posttest results did not yield quantitatively significant results in students' reflective thinking after the intervention. However, 21 out of 29 qualitative post-test respondents who utilise chatbots indicated that their interactions with the chatbot showed evidence of reflective thinking that improved their learning processes. The results revealed that students initially had doubts about using a chatbot for their learning, as they felt it might hinder their learning process or be unnecessary. Students perceived chatbots to be unreliable due to providing wrong answers, inaccurate code snippets, hallucinations, and plagiarised content. Therefore, students preferred to be self-reliant and not dependent on chatbots. Following the intervention, students demonstrated an increase of confidence in utilising chatbots as a learning tool, especially those who also used the suggested prompt. Students found that chatbots and the suggested prompt could be used to support learning and not only to provide answers. The chatbot was beneficial as a learning tool, providing additional information to clarify their understanding and reasoning behind providing simple explanations of programming concepts. Future work will focus on an intervention study in a more controlled environment to isolate the features of generative AI tools' impact and minimise external factors.

This research to practice paper presents a reflective study showing the observations of the teaching teams and the practices during industrial projects for the Master of Software Development (MSwDev) program at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), New Zealand. It is a conversion master program that helps the students to acquire specific skills to be ready for the transition to the software development industry, including the ability to work in an Agile team. Software development projects supported by industrial partners are an excellent means to evaluate the technical capacity of the students and the required skills. This reflective paper describes the evolution of an industry-sourced problem-based agile student project, which over three successive years, has included students from three different cohorts (User Experience (UX), Business Analysts (BA), and Software Developers (SwDev)). This year, a collaboration between different cohorts was not possible. Thus only software development students formed the agile teams.This paper describes and reflects on the teaching staff’s useful and problematic observations over the last twelve months using only the SwDev cohort and correlates that to the previous reflections when three different cohorts formed an Agile team. Those reflections are described, and several recommendations are drawn from the experiences. The authors also discuss the lessons learnt and the effect of COVID-19 on the teams’ performance.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents a reflective study showing the online teaching and advisory practices during Covid-19. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning and active practices to engage online learners are now centre focused on educational institutions' everyday praxis. Tertiary educators have often struggled during enforced lockdowns to convert courses from face-to-face delivery to pure online delivery. This change has presented challenges in curriculum development as academics strive to achieve best practice. It is also challenging to design a pedagogically sound and engaging course for diverse students from a broad spectrum of educational backgrounds. Online classes often require unique infrastructures such as devices with specific tools or hardware requirements. This paper presents a reflective study showing the online teaching and advisory practices during Covid-19 by the first author while teaching and supervising Master of Science (MSc) dissertation students online at a top-ranked UK university (i.e. University of Liverpool). The first author has been involved in the programme for more than ten years. This university is called University A (Uni A) throughout this paper. The paper demonstrates Uni A students' journey from finding the dissertation advisor to completing the research project. It also discusses the class structure, the university policy and guidelines, teaching practices, and how student progress is managed and assessed. The paper then contrasts the first authors experience at Uni A with that of all authors (including the first author - who has been working at both universities) experience supervising postgraduate and honours students at a top New Zealand University (i.e. Victoria University of Wellington). This university is called University B (Uni B) throughout this paper. The lessons learnt from teaching a stream of students enrolled in a pure distance learning degree (i.e. deliberate online degree) at Uni A offers insight into how Uni B might better restructure its predominantly face-to-face degrees to support both online and in-person best practices.

Development platforms, such as GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket, have become very popular among software developers. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for developers to inadvertently leak secrets (e.g. API keys, credentials) and confidential source code on public Git repositories, facilitating numerous security breaches that impact reputation and result in losing revenue. Current Git leak detection strategies and tools often fall short due to a high false-positive rate, an ever-growing number of platforms and repositories to inspect, and a limited reach. This paper investigates the shortcomings of traditional Git leak detection methodologies and introduces an alternative approach to overcome those shortcomings. The approach consists of identifying all Git repositories associated with an organisation by collecting the URLs and the respective maintainer names from its endpoint fleet, empowering blue-teams to prioritise content inspection efforts against a well-defined set of targets and to boost incident response capabilities. The paper describes a prototype we implemented that serves as a proof of concept for the approach.

The number of distance learning degrees has increased dramatically over the last decade. Yet, despite this increase, teaching computer security subjects for online students remains challenging. Online classes often need a special infrastructure such as devices with specific tools, or hardware requirements. It is also a challenge to design a course that is pedagogically sound, engaging and fun for students who may come from a wide spectrum of educational backgrounds. The quality of the education delivered also differs from one institution to another. To provide a sense of accreditation and regulation, the National Cyber-security Centre, which is a part of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the United Kingdom (UK) has certified only two online (i.e. distance learning) cybersecurity MSc degrees in the country.This paper presents an innovative way of designing capstone projects (i.e. case studies) along with the impact of it on retention, completion, and success rates in a world-class distance learning degree at the University of Liverpool (UoL) over the last ten years. The Chartered Institute for IT (i.e. BSC) is the accreditation body of the degree program studied in this research1.

This paper reports on the development of team and individual project based learning in our two core first-year engineering courses (Engineering Technology ENGR101 & Engineering Modelling and Design ENGR110) as an innovative and successful alternative to traditional lecture and laboratory learning. Both courses are central to the first-year programme, and student experience, and are taken by all engineering majors in our Bachelor of Engineering (BE). Improvements to these courses have shown a marked increase in student success crucial for our relatively open entry programme.

This paper reports on the findings from 15 pastoral care interviews as part of a broader research project aimed at investigating the relatively low completion rate of first-year Bachelor of Engineering (BE) students. A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) was chosen to examine the text for issues beyond the student's academic ability or performance. In particular, we examine the interview text in relation to Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and biopower in an attempt to reflect on the power-relations within the first year teaching and learning environment.

This full-paper relates to research on the effectiveness of GPA thresholding as a predictor of eventual grade performance in engineering study. Rather than rely on High School grades as a predictor of eventual success in tertiary (ICT-related) engineering, we have adopted a more open-entry model, but require a high performance from the students over their compulsory first year courses in order to progress in engineering study. In this paper we examine whether this is a satisfactory predictor of eventual student success (based on grade performance), or is it that issues such as High-School to University transition unduly negatively influence these grades and lead to a decision not to allow an otherwise capable student to progress. To examine this, we compare student GPAs and graduation rates between a four year Bachelor of Engineering and a three year Bachelor of Science degree which share similar courses. The hypothesis to test is whether students who have been excluded from continuing with Engineering study are in fact capable of passing the advanced level technical courses.

In this full paper we describe an innovative practice regarding the design and introduction of compulsory, small-group, holistic tutorials into our core first year engineering courses. Instead of traditional tutorials which seek to reinforce lecture content or provide guided help with assignments or test revision, these tutorials specifically focus on connecting topics between all courses a student is currently taking. They also aim to clearly demonstrate the value of a cohesive body of knowledge, instead of rote-learning of facts from individual areas. Tutorials are accompanied by practical demonstrations, and collaborative, guided discussions. The inclusion of these tutorials, along with other minor changes to the course content, has shown marked improvements in students' grades, retention, student evaluations and, most importantly, a change in many students' perception of the value of a coherent body of knowledge separate to that necessary to perform well in assessments. Such tutorials appear to have positively affected the retention rate of engineering students in our degree programme.

An investigation into the initially high attrition rates in our new Engineering programme uncovered a number of non-academic factors that led to poor rates of student engagement. Dealing with today's “millennials” has required us to focus on meeting student expectations to a greater extent than we ever expected. Indeed, once we began to understand the modern, technically motivated student, we overhauled our first year engineering offering, as our focus on the traditional delivery of “enabling” subjects (physics, mathematics, programming) was failing. The result has been a substantial increase in student satisfaction and in the number of students gaining a GPA that enables them to proceed in engineering study.

We investigate the ability of introductory physics and mathematics courses to provide a successful pathway into the Engineering program at Victoria University of Wellington. We find that an increasing number of students require these courses, however neither course appears to adequately prepare students for the completion of an engineering degree. The introductory physics course in particular, does not adequately prepare student to pass subsequent physics courses. We examine both the delivery and curricula of these courses against literature `best practice' models. Finally we make a series of recommended changes be made to either university entry requirements or to these courses to offer allow students a reasonable pathway into the BE(Hons) degree.

An opportunity arose to secure a share of a multimillion dollar initiative to train additional ICT Postgraduate students. However, local and national ICT industries did not want such students, with the greatest demand being for conventional 4 year Bachelor of Engineering or 3 year Bachelor of Science graduates. This paper outlines a strategy that developed a suite of programmes that passed nine quality assurance stages and won a competitive bid to be selected as one of three preferred suppliers. Further, the programmes so developed addressed industry needs, and were able to target both domestic and international students.

This paper outlines and discusses the use of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), a qualitative approach to investigating discourse. FDA offers a theoretical method which reveals, from the discourse, the various power structures affecting engineering students in their first year. This method has been unexplored in the STEM educational research field, but has been used successfully in psychology, humanities and educational research.

We describe the planning, delivery, and assessment of laboratory classes offered as part of two first-year mathematics courses for engineering students. The laboratory classes, which use practical examples inspired by second-, third- and fourth-year engineering courses, were designed to illustrate the relevance of mathematics to engineering. Once these classes were introduced the percentage of engaged students increased by up to a third, leading to similar improvements in pass rates and median marks.

Since the first offering of our Bachelor of Engineering degree (BE) at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in 2007 we have had consistently poor pass rates for first year students. At VUW we have collected survey information since 2010. While these surveys have provided excellent information they do not provide sufficient depth of information for us to fully understand the problems facing first year students. Since 2012 pastoral care interviews have greatly enhanced our understanding of the student experience. This paper discusses the findings of the surveys, the creation of our pastoral care system and findings from pastoral care interviews.

As a new provider of engineering, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) faces a significant number of challenges in attracting and retaining quality students. As the primary funder of Universities, the New Zealand Government is providing conflicting funding directives, desiring an increase in student numbers, but penalizing poor course completion rates and banning funding on foundation or bridging courses. This paper details the development of a successful engineering programme, focusing on the modern “digital” aspects of engineering, in the face of these challenges.

The transition from High School to first year Engineering at University can be very difficult for many students. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (VUW), developed an early warning system for student grade performance: Big Sister, and a system of Pastoral Care within the School of Engineering and Computer Science. This paper will discuss how Big Sister supports the identification of at risk students and how this system is integrated into the delivery of effective Pastoral Care. Importantly, this paper will also discuss the information gained from student interviews by the Pastoral Care staff member. In particular, we discuss the findings in relation to student self-efficacy and success and how this is being used to improve the first year teaching and learning environment.

The New Zealand Government is moving towards restricting access to tertiary education and implementing a managed entry scheme. It is therefore important to be able to predict whether a student has a reasonable likelihood of succeeding in tertiary engineering study. New Zealand secondary schools mostly operate on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) model whereby subjects are assessed on the basis of discrete individual modules. The paper compares the NCEA results to first year grades in tertiary engineering subjects obtained from most New Zealand providers of the BE degree to determine whether these NCEA grades can be used as a predictor of success or failure in tertiary engineering programmes. This is the first nation-wide survey of its kind and has yielded surprising results. For example, predicting success based on whether a student has not achieved is more insightful than basing on achievements, which is counter to the basis of many school league tables worldwide.

Victoria University of Wellington in partnership with the regional polytechnic, WelTec, undertook a major exercise to identify, and where possible, resolve, barriers to recruitment and retention in the “digital” engineering specializations. This paper focuses on the retention aspects of this research. Informed by student surveys, focus groups and secondary school academic achievement data, we identified contributing issues of academic preparation, student expectation and cultural influencers. In response we developed an engineering preparation course, a mathematics based diagnostic tool, Peer-Assisted learning support, engineering cultural activities, and redeveloped our core first year engineering course. Although in the early stages of delivery, these initiatives have been well received by the students. We are closely monitoring the results of these initiatives with the expectation that fewer students will abandon their studies and a greater portion of the marginal students will attain passing grades.