Toward True Differentiated Instruction with PathMX and Curriculum as Code
Mark Johnson and Chris Alvin
Department of Computer Science, Furman University
CCSCNE 2026
The Problem
CS1 students arrive with vastly different backgrounds:
- 41% no prior programming experience
- 47% less than one year
- 12% one to three years
True differentiated instruction requires personalized guides, project variants, individualized feedback, and adapted examples for every student.
This is unsustainable. Manually creating a single personalized artifact takes 30-60 minutes. We make compromises, and some students don't get what they need.
PathMX: Curriculum as Code
Three conventions that make curriculum agent-friendly:
- Markdown-first: human-readable, version-controlled, AI-native
- Type-hinted files: roles encoded in filenames
week-1.slides.md,lab-3.spec.md,student-A.persona.md
- Hyperlinked paths: links create a knowledge graph agents and humans can navigate
The key insight: when curriculum follows these conventions, LLM agents can generate personalized content on demand in minutes, not hours, while instructors retain full control.
Demo
- Repository structure and file conventions
- Generating a personalized learning guide from a student persona
- Themed project variant generation
- The PathMX player and web rendering
Early Results and Takeaways
Student perceptions (n = 17, 5-point scale):
| Measure | Mean |
|---|---|
| Project choice increased motivation | 4.47 |
| Feedback specific and helpful | 4.35 |
| Guides helped when struggling | 4.24 |
| Materials relevant to interests | 4.00 |
Under 5 minutes of agent interaction + instructor review replaced 30-60 minutes of manual authoring per artifact.
Start small, build style guides early, keep student data anonymized.
Thank You
Mark Johnson: [email protected] Chris Alvin: [email protected]
Visit* PathMX.dev for more information.
* or ask your agent to do it for you :)