2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Adversarial Competitions in University Programming Education: An Experience Report

Presented at Computers in Education (CoED): Learning, Engagement & Inclusion (9 of 9) -- W308B

Rising enrollment in university computer science (CS) programs has heightened interest in CS education strategies that improve student engagement with course material and accommodate students who desire to innovate upon course concepts. To this end, we propose the idea of integrating competitions as opportunities for learning in university programming education, with the aim of leveraging gamification, competition, and automation to engage students. In this experience report, we present our implementation of an optional adversarial competition as an extension to an online, graduate-level artificial intelligence (AI) course with 949 students, of which 174 participated. We design an automated platform with graphical elements and scheduled matchmaking to provide live feedback, help students visualize assignment results, and evaluate their AI's performance with respect to their classmates. After the competition, participants and nonparticipants completed questionnaires to gauge perceptions of learning, satisfaction with the competition, and reasons for participating or not participating. Statistical analyses on responses revealed relationships between time invested in the competition and positive perceptions of learning, as well as between age and participation. This work seeks to apply a live competition to core university programming curriculum at scale, identify traits in both participants' backgrounds and the competition which would lead to increased retention or attrition, and provide an entry point for further exploration into developing integrated competitive co-curricular activities in computing education at scale.

Authors

Henry Z Liao Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Henry Liao is a Master's student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he cofounded the educational platform ByteFight to host game AI competitions for computer science classrooms. He now conducts control research for autonomous vehicles at the Driverless Intelligent Vehicle Lab and oversees applications of ByteFight to computer science education at scale.
Tyler Kwok Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Tyler Kwok is a software developer in industry. He holds a B.S in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he cofounded ByteFight. His research focuses on d/Deaf and hard of hearing accessibility and computing education. His work has appeared in NeurIPS and ISWC. He now works on platform infrastructure for large scale systems.
Emmanuel Munoz Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Emmanuel Munoz is currently pursuing a B.Sc. degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is an undergraduate researcher of the People-Agents Research for Computing Education (PARCE) Laboratory, interested in research concerning human-centered computing, computer science education (CS Ed), and human-AI interaction.
Thad Starner http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8442-7842 Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Thad Starner is a Georgia Tech Professor and a Staff Research Scientist at Google Deepmind. Since 1994, Starner has been researching uses of sign language recognition. Professor Starner has been inducted into the CHI Academy in 2017 and AWE's XR Hall of Fame in 2024. In 2025 he became a Fellow in the Association for Computing Machinery and has over 100 issued United States utility patents on wearables, artificial intelligence and interfaces.
Pedro Guillermo Feijóo-García http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3024-1257 Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Pedro Guillermo Feijóo-García is a Lecturer in the School of Computing Instruction at the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds B.Sc. degrees in Systems and Computing Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, and an M.Sc. in Systems and Computing Engineering from Universidad de los Andes. He also earned a Graduate Certificate in University Teaching from Universidad El Bosque and a Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from the University of Florida. He directs the People-Agents Research for Computing Education (PARCE) Laboratory, focusing on human-centered computing, computing education, and human-AI interaction, particularly hidden curricula, software engineering education, and AI-supported learning environments. He is a Fulbright alumnus with over 15 years of teaching experience in higher education across Colombia and the United States.
Abrahim Ladha Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Abrahim Ladha is a Lecturer in the School of Computing Instruction at the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, United States. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Cybersecurity from Georgia Institute of Technology. He primarily teaches theoretical computer science courses.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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