I’m honored to share that our paper, To Tab or Not to Tab: Measuring Critical Engagement in AI Code Completion Tools Using Behavioral Signals and Attention Checks, won the Best Paper Award at ITiCSE 2026.
Later that summer at ITiCSE 2026, the paper won the conference Best Paper Award. I wrote a follow-up post about the award, Jess' presentation, and the team behind the project.
I am excited to share that our paper, To Tab or Not to Tab: Measuring Critical Engagement in AI Code Completion Tools Using Behavioral Signals and Attention Checks, has been accepted for publication at ITiCSE 2026.
We have been asking a simple but important question: when novice programmers accept AI code suggestions, are they thoughtfully engaging with those suggestions or simply tabbing through them? Our paper introduces attention checks, deliberately incorrect AI suggestions that conflict with a programmer's immediate goals, as a way to study whether users notice, question, and critically evaluate AI-generated code before accepting it.
This Clover project matters to me not only because of the paper itself, but because it grew through collaborative undergraduate research and helped student researcher Jess Hutchison reach her first publication. I wanted this post to capture the work behind the paper: what we were studying, why it matters, and how the project became a place for students to grow into real research ownership.