"Like a Nesting Doll": Analyzing Recursion Analogies Generated by CS
  Students using Large Language Models
Seth Bernstein Paul Denny Juho Leinonen Lauren Kan Arto Hellas Matt Littlefield Sami Sarsa Stephen MacNeil
Grasping complex computing concepts often poses a challenge for students who
struggle to anchor these new ideas to familiar experiences and understandings.
To help with this, a good analogy can bridge the gap between unfamiliar
concepts and familiar ones, providing an engaging way to aid understanding.
However, creating effective educational analogies is difficult even for
experienced instructors. We investigate to what extent large language models
(LLMs), specifically ChatGPT, can provide access to personally relevant
analogies on demand. Focusing on recursion, a challenging threshold concept, we
conducted an investigation analyzing the analogies generated by more than 350
first-year computing students. They were provided with a code snippet and
tasked to generate their own recursion-based analogies using ChatGPT,
optionally including personally relevant topics in their prompts. We observed a
great deal of diversity in the analogies produced with student-prescribed
topics, in contrast to the otherwise generic analogies, highlighting the value
of student creativity when working with LLMs. Not only did students enjoy the
activity and report an improved understanding of recursion, but they described
more easily remembering analogies that were personally and culturally relevant.