Students' Feedback Requests and Interactions with the SCRIPT Chatbot: Do They Get What They Ask For?

Abstract: Building on prior research on Generative AI (GenAI) and related tools for programming education, we developed SCRIPT, a chatbot based on ChatGPT-4o-mini, to support novice learners. SCRIPT allows for open-ended interactions and structured guidance through predefined prompts. We evaluated the tool via an experiment with 136 students from an introductory programming course at a large German university and analyzed how students interacted with SCRIPT while solving programming tasks with a focus on their feedback preferences. The results reveal that students' feedback requests seem to follow a specific sequence. Moreover, the chatbot responses aligned well with students' requested feedback types (in 75%), and it adhered to the system prompt constraints. These insights inform the design of GenAI-based learning support systems and highlight challenges in balancing guidance and flexibility in AI-assisted tools.