Automated grading systems, or auto-graders, have become ubiquitous in programming education, and the way they generate feedback has become increasingly automated as well. However, there is insufficient evidence regarding auto-grader feedback's effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes, in a way that differentiates students who utilized the feedback and students who did not. In this study, we fill this critical gap. Specifically, we analyze students' interactions with auto-graders in an introductory Python programming course, offered at five community colleges in the United States. Our results show that students checking the feedback more frequently tend to get higher scores from their programming assignments overall. Our results also show that a submission that follows a student checking the feedback tends to receive a higher score than a submission that follows a student ignoring the feedback. Our results provide evidence on auto-grader feedback's effectiveness, encourage their increased utilization, and call for future work to continue their evaluation in this age of automation

The accelerating pace of developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the increasing role that technology plays in society necessitates substantial changes in the structure of the workforce. Besides scientists and engineers, there is a need for a very large workforce of competent AI technicians (i.e., maintainers, integrators) and users (i.e., operators). As traditional 4-year and 2-year degree-based education cannot fill this quickly opening gap, alternative training methods have to be developed. We present the results of the first four years of the AI Technicians program which is a unique collaboration between the U.S. Army's Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C) and Carnegie Mellon University to design, implement and evaluate novel rapid occupational training methods to create a competitive AI workforce at the technicians level. Through this multi-year effort we have already trained 59 AI Technicians. A key observation is that ongoing frequent updates to the training are necessary as the adoption of AI in the U.S. Army and within the society at large is evolving rapidly. A tight collaboration among the stakeholders from the army and the university is essential for successful development and maintenance of the training for the evolving role. Our findings can be leveraged by large organizations that face the challenge of developing a competent AI workforce as well as educators and researchers engaged in solving the challenge.