Dr Paul Denny

Associate Professor
School of Computer Science
The University of Auckland
New Zealand

Dr. Paul Denny is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research interests include developing and evaluating tools for supporting collaborative learning, particularly involving student-generated resources, and exploring the ways that students engage with these environments. His recent work in computing education has explored the implications arising from the emergence of large language models such as Codex. One of his projects, PeerWise, hosts more than six million practice questions, with associated solutions and explanations, created by students from 90 countries. He has fostered a community of educational researchers around this project, more than 160 of whom have published their work as a result. Dr Denny has been recognized for contributions to teaching both nationally and internationally, receiving New Zealand's National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award (2009), the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching (2010), and the QS Reimagine Education Overall Award (2018).

Recent work

Research overview

A short video providing an overview of current research.

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Conversing with Copilot

Prompt engineering as a pedagogical tool for novice programmers.

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Metacognition and coding

A tool for scaffolding programming problem-solving.

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Crowdsourcing exams

Selecting student-authored questions for use on summative exams.

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