> 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

May 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 2024 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

[Lab Demo](../demos/lab-demo/cs1-loops.lab.md)

We're going to differentiate this live!

Volunteer time...

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

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# What makes this work?

> **Context**: Legible, descriptive context is king (for humans and agents!)

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# The three core principles of PathMX

![PathMX Principles](../files/figure-2-pathmx-principles.png)

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![Make new files from canonical sources](../files/figure-3-pathmx-graph.png)

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![Export artifacts](../files/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:

- [Conference Slides](/index.path.llm.md)