Research and publications
These records include published work, preprints, and a manuscript under review. Each paper page gives a summary, its current status, and the available citation or full text.
Published papers and posters
LLMs' reshaping of people, processes, products, and society in software development: a qualitative exploration with early adopters
Benyamin Tabarsi; Heidi Reichert; Sam Gilson; Ally Limke; Sandeep Kuttal; Tiffany Barnes
Published journal article · Empirical Software Engineering, volume 32, article 21 · Citation year 2027 · First online 2026-08-07
DOI 10.1007/s10664-026-10917-0
Adversarial Assignment Perturbation: Effects on Help-Seeking Behaviors in Student Generative AI Chatbot Use
Sam Gilson; Benyamin Tabarsi; Tiffany Barnes
Published conference paper · Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2026), LNAI 16585, pp. 440–449 · Citation year 2027 · First online 2026-06-27
DOI 10.1007/978-3-032-29770-9_48
Confirming Correct, Missing the Rest: LLM Tutoring Agents Struggle Where Feedback Matters Most
Tahreem Yasir; Wenbo Li; Sam Gilson; Sutapa Tithi; Xiaoyi Tian; Tiffany Barnes
Published workshop paper · Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2026), pp. 819–840 · Citation year 2026
Designing AI-Resistant Assignments via Iterative Perturbation to Promote Interactive Learning
Sam Gilson
Published poster · Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.2 (SIGCSE TS 2026), p. 1745 · Citation year 2026
How Do Undergraduates Interested in Computer Science Use Online, On-Demand CS Coursework?
Sam Gilson; Tiffany Barnes; Mahzabin Tamanna; Saminur Islam
Published conference paper · Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ’25), pp. 271–275 · Citation year 2025
Preprints
When Verification Hurts: Asymmetric Effects of Multi-Agent Feedback in Logic Proof Tutoring
Tahreem Yasir; Sutapa Dey Tithi; Benyamin Tabarsi; Dmitri Droujkov; Sam Gilson; Yasitha Rajapaksha; Xiaoyi Tian; Arun Ramesh; DongKuan Xu; Tiffany Barnes
arXiv preprint · arXiv:2603.27076 · Citation year 2026 · First online 2026-03-28
Perturbed Assignments and Subgoal-Labeled AI Literacy Instruction in Undergraduate Discrete Mathematics
Sam Gilson
Preprint; submitted to the SIGCSE TS 2027 Student Research Competition · Preprint · Citation year 2026
Manuscript under review
Free-tier Large Language Models on the MATH Benchmark: Implications for AI Literacy Instruction
Sam Gilson
Manuscript under review; submitted to the AERA 2027 annual meeting · Manuscript under review
Talks
Perturbed Assignments and Subgoal-Labeled AI Literacy Instruction in Undergraduate Discrete Mathematics — SPLICE LLM Working Group, 9 October 2026.
Making research easier to find — Game2Learn lab, North Carolina State University, 7 October 2026.
Applications of AI Literacy to GenAI-Assisted Game Development — Guest lecture, CSC 484/584 Game AI, North Carolina State University, 17 September 2026.