Mehmet Arif Demirtaş

Hi, I’m Arif!

I am a PhD student in the Computer Science department at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a focus on computing education research and human computer interaction, advised by Dr. Katie Cunningham.

I’m interested in having a better understanding of

  • how students learn programming 💻
  • what obstacles they face and how we can address these to broaden participation in CS 🌍
  • how we can design technologies to aid their learning process 📚

Recent Updates

Feb 1, 2025
🎊 Our paper ''PLAID: Supporting Computing Instructors to Identify Domain-Specific Programming Plans at Scale'' is accepted at CHI 2025!
In this work, we identified instructor needs for developing instruction for application-focused computing domains through interviews and design workshops, designed PLAID as an interface for navigating and refining LLM-generated content to address these needs, and evaluated it through an user study. Preprint here.
Dec 8, 2024
✍️ I attended SIGCSE Virtual 2024!
I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on teaching planning and decomposition skills with valuable panelists Dr Eliane S. Wiese, James Finnie-Ansley, Dr Rodrigo Silva Duran, and Dr Kathryn Cunningham. I also presented at the doctoral consortium organized by Dr Lauri Malmi and Dr Colleen Lewis.
Aug 8, 2024
✈️🇦🇺 I'm in Melbourne for ICER 2024!
I will present our work on programming plans on Wednesday.
July 29, 2024
✈️🌉 I'm in Pittsburgh for LearnLab Summer School!
I will be participating in the Computing Education Research track of the LearnLab Summer School.
July 15, 2024
✈️🍑 I'm in Atlanta for EDM 2024 and L@S 2024!
I’m presenting our replication study on Wednesday, and participating in the Doctoral Consortium on Monday and Tuesday.
June 1, 2024
🎊 Our paper ''Validating, Refining, and Identifying Programming Plans Using Learning Curve Analysis on Code Writing Data'' is accepted at ICER 2024!
In this paper, we focused on programming plans as a potential knowledge component model with my co-authors Max Fowler, Nicole Hu, and Katie Cunningham. Our analysis provides a tool to visualize students’ plan acquisition process and evaluate plans on how well students can apply them to solve new problems. Preprint here.
May 15, 2024
🎊 Our paper ''Reexamining Learning Curve Analysis in Programming Education: The Value of Many Small Problems'' is accepted at EDM 2024!
In this work, we replicated Kelly Rivers et al.’s 2016 paper with my co-authors Max Fowler and Katie Cunningham. Surprisingly, we found that AST nodes can model skill acquisition to a promising extent, contrary to prior findings, especially in courses with many short programming exercises. Our preprint is available here.