> Source URL: /CCSCNE/talk.slides
# Toward True Differentiated Instruction with PathMX and Curriculum as Code

**Mark Johnson** and **Chris Alvin**

Department of Computer Science, Furman University

CCSCNE 2026

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# The Problem

My experience as a first-time CS1 teacher:

- Students were mostly non-majors
- A large variety of backgrounds and experiences
- A variety of interests and learning preferences

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# Fall 2025 CSC-121

- **41%** no prior programming experience
- **47%** less than one year
- **12%** one to three years

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How to meet each student where they are at?

> **Differentiated** instruction.

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Tomlinson describes in her [foundational work](https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/siteASCD/publications/books/differentiated-classroom2nd-sample-chapters.pdf), differentiated instruction is

> “a philosophy of teaching rooted in deep respect for students, acknowledgment of their differences, and the drive to help all students thrive”

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This is hard to do! Especially when class sizes are large and you are using a curriculum that is not designed for this.

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# Meanwhile...

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# The Rise of "Agentic Engineering"

![Agentic Engineering](../files/UI/agents.png)

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Tools like Cursor, and Claude Code live along side your code and can write code on demand

A quick demo...

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> What if we wrote curriculum as code?

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# Introducing PathMX

- PathMX is a _methodology_ for writing curriculum as code
- Based on open standards and conventional tools
- Friendly for humans and agents

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# Lab Demo

We're going to differentiate this [Python Lab](../demos/lab-demo/cs1-loops.lab.md) live!

Volunteer time...

1. A favorite programming language (not Python)? **OCaml**
2. Favorite science fiction movie or book? **Star Trek**
3. A difficulty level (easy, medium, hard)? **Medium**

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**Generated Result**: [A Star Trek themed recursion lab in OCaml](../demos/lab-demo/ocaml-recursion.lab.md)

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# What makes this work?

- **Context**: Legible, descriptive context is king (for humans and agents!)
- **Human-first Authoring**: AI agents only for differentiation and scaffolding
- **Simple: Files in a folder**: Agents can `ls`, `grep`, `find`, `cp`, `mv`, etc.

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![figure 1](../grok-26/assets/figure-1-pathmx-approach.png)

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![figure 2](../grok-26/assets/figure-2-pathmx-principles.png)

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![figure 3](../grok-26/assets/figure-3-pathmx-graph.png)

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![figure 4](../grok-26/assets/figure-4-pathmx-artifacts.png)

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# The PathMX Development Framework

- What I'm using for these slides and the [pathmx.dev](https://pathmx.dev) site
- Currently in early beta
- Looking for feedback and collaborators
- Contact [Mark Johnson](mailto:mark@fellowhumans.com) to get involved

![QR Code](../files/UI/pathmx-dot-dev-qr.png)

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## Backlinks

The following sources link to this document:

- [Paper Session Slides](/index.path.llm.md)
- [Internal link with query params](/markdown.demo.llm.md)