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.

Analysing behavioural data from massive open online courses (MOOCs) logs data can help in forming useful learning pathways for learners. In the existing literature, learning path recommender systems are designed using neural networks and deep learning. These recommender systems are complex and focus on designing accurate systems to recommend learning pathways to learners. In this work, we have designed a simple and fast online learning path recommender system that utilizes demographic and behavioural data of MOOC learners. This system identifies similar learners by utilizing demographic and behavioural data and recommends pathways of successful students to struggling students with the aim of helping learners to complete the MOOC. We evaluated our system pedagogically by interviewing the MOOC lecturer.

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.

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 innovative practice paper describes a projectbased group work where conversion master students developed the skills required for agile software development methods. There are many examples of agile methods taught in, for instance, capstone courses in software engineering programmes. It has been shown to be a popular and beneficial method of learning. However, most agile teams in the software industry are made up of members with different educational backgrounds (i.e. not just software developers, as there will also business analysts, designers, testers etc.). Such a diversity of roles might be beneficial in teaching agile methods in an academic setting. This reflective educational paper describes the evolution of an industry sourced problem-based agile student project, which over three successive years has included students from three different faculties. Although the experience has broadly been positive each year, this paper describes and reflects on both the good and problematic observations that the teaching staff has made over the years. The changes of the projects has been based by reflecting on these insights. These reflections are described and several recommendations are drawn from the experiences. These include, that it is important that the cohorts collaborate and work together in parallel. Individual groups, of diverse cohorts, should work in isolation. It is important to have industrial partners who are participating actively in the process, and it is important to not underestimate the work that is required by the academics to coordinate the projects to make them successful.

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry in New Zealand is growing rapidly. The traditional university courses are preparing an insufficient number of graduates to sustain the growth. Many of the traditional graduate students lack key soft skills that are important in team based software development. This paper reports on the development of a conversion Master of Software Development degree. The students are all graduates with little or no computer science degrees, are taught key programming skills, with a focus on agile development. The programme begins by focusing on individual programming skills through solving problems. Later industrial partners are engaged by providing industrial problems to agile teams of students. The industrial partners are active partners in the agile teams as product owners. By solving the problems, the students develop both technical and non-technical skills while utilizing the skills obtained from previous studies. The results from the first year of the programme are encouraging. A key result is that a high number of students found work in paid IT positions before graduating. The main issue of the first year was introducing too many topics at the same time, over-assessment, not enough communication and contact time, little opportunity for the students to make their own experiences, and learning by making mistakes. The programme has been changed for the next year/s cohort to introduce less topics at once, provide time and space for learning, and a redesign of scheduling assessments.