Experiences of Learning to Code
Perspectives of Undergraduate Physics Students in 2024
Joe Marsh Rossney 
Sarah Hogarth
Polux Gabriel Garcia Elizondo
Ross Galloway
Britton Smith
About this site
This site provides access to research materials and outputs produced during the “Experiences of Learning to Code” project, which was run by a staff-student collaboration in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh from June–December 2024.
The site contains the following contents, navigable via the top panel.
Project Overview: a concise overview of the aims, methods and key results of the project.
Resources for Researchers:
Project Proposal: the original proposal submitted to the Principle’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS) in March 2024.
Interview Sign-up Survey: the Jisc survey disseminated in September 2024, which enabled undergraduate physics students to put themselves forward for interview.
Participant Information & Informed Consent: the combined Participant Information and Informed Consent form, which students were required to have completed prior to their interview.
Instructions for Interviewers: step-by-step instructions for conducting 1-1 interviews with students over Microsoft Teams, starting from the point of first contact with the selected student, and ending with instructions on how to redact and format the Microsoft Teams transcript, ready for analysis.
Interview Guide: the interview guide used by interviewers during interviews with students.
Reading List: a list of references which we found useful during this work.
Publications & Media: a work in progress!
Code & Data: this page describes and locates the various code and data artifacts produced during the project.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Kristel Torokoff for playing an instrumental role in securing financial support for this project via the School of Physics and Astronomy. We would also like to thank Kristel Torokoff and Joe Zuntz for conversations that helped to shape this project.
Financial support
We gratefully acknowledge that funding for this Principle’s Teaching Award Scholarship (PTAS) project was provided by the University of Edinburgh Development Trust.
JMR was directly supported by both PTAS and the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. SH was supported by PTAS. PGGE was supported by the School of Physics & Astronomy through the Career Development Summer Scholarship programme.
Correspondence
joemar@ceh.ac.ukfor enquiries related to the project, website, code and data.
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Copyright
Citation
@online{MarshRossney2025,
author = {Marsh Rossney, Joe and Hogarth, Sarah and Gabriel Garcia
Elizondo, Polux and Galloway, Ross and Smith, Britton},
title = {Experiences of {Learning} to {Code:} {Perspectives} of
{Undergraduate} {Physics} {Students} in 2024},
date = {2025-08},
url = {https://ExpLrnCode-2024.github.io/},
langid = {en},
abstract = {This site provides access to research materials and
outputs produced during the \_“Experiences of Learning to Code”\_
project, which was run by a staff-student collaboration in the
School of Physics \& Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh from
June-\/-December 2024. The study sought to understand how the
experiences of undergraduate physics students taking programming
courses have been changing due to the sudden availability of
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) systems. The main inquiry
took the form of a series of semi-structured interviews with 24
student participants, whose experiences span the periods before and
after the advent of GenAI.}
}