Feedback effects on time to solution did not differ significantly between novice and advanced students, though predicted trends suggest feedback was more beneficial for advanced students¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Interaction terms between hint type and student level were not statistically significant for time to success; the main effect of student level was also not significant once hint type was accounted for. → Tsvetomila Mihaylova 2026

Evidence¶

Tsvetomila Mihaylova 2026¶

Tsvetomila Mihaylova, Evanfiya Logacheva, Arto Hellas, Jing Fan, Francisco Castro, Bita Akram, Narges Norouzi, Peter Brusilovsky, Juho Leinonen. (2026). The Effects of Structured LLM-Generated Feedback on Programming Assignment Performance. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16933 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.16933

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Mixed-effects model with hint type × student level interaction on log time to success (Figure 2, Table 10). Students were split as Novice (below 3 years experience; 111 students) or Advanced (over three years; 38 students) from self-reported experience. Interaction confidence intervals included zero.

"Single-Issue Feedback and Diagnostic Feedback are associated with improvement in the time for completion. In contrast, General Feedback does not show a clear effect. The main effect of student level is not statistically significant once hint type is accounted for."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Advanced students showed reduced attempts with all hint types, while novices did not clearly benefit and made slightly more submissions with Single-Issue Feedback — related
• All three LLM-generated feedback types are associated with faster time to solution than a compiler-errors-only baseline, with Single-Issue Feedback showing the largest reduction — related
• All three LLM feedback types credibly reduced attempts to success relative to the baseline, with the largest reduction for Diagnostic Feedback — related
• Feedback type did not affect whether students solved assignments; solution rates were very similar across all conditions — related