Owlgorithm: Supporting Self-Regulated Learning in Competitive Programming through LLM-Driven Reflection
This addresses the challenge of enhancing learning for novice programmers in educational settings, though it is incremental as it builds on existing AI and educational tools.
The researchers tackled the problem of supporting self-regulated learning in competitive programming by developing Owlgorithm, an AI-driven platform that generates reflective questions, which students and TAs found useful for reflection and debugging but noted issues with accuracy and usability.
We present Owlgorithm, an educational platform that supports Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) in competitive programming (CP) through AI-generated reflective questions. Leveraging GPT-4o, Owlgorithm produces context-aware, metacognitive prompts tailored to individual student submissions. Integrated into a second- and third-year CP course, the system-provided reflective prompts adapted to student outcomes: guiding deeper conceptual insight for correct solutions and structured debugging for partial or failed ones. Our exploratory assessment of student ratings and TA feedback revealed both promising benefits and notable limitations. While many found the generated questions useful for reflection and debugging, concerns were raised about feedback accuracy and classroom usability. These results suggest advantages of LLM-supported reflection for novice programmers, though refinements are needed to ensure reliability and pedagogical value for advanced learners. From our experience, several key insights emerged: GenAI can effectively support structured reflection, but careful prompt design, dynamic adaptation, and usability improvements are critical to realizing their potential in education. We offer specific recommendations for educators using similar tools and outline next steps to enhance Owlgorithm's educational impact. The underlying framework may also generalize to other reflective learning contexts.