Microcontent in Action: How CS1 Students Use Lecture Snippets to Engage with Fundamental Programming Concepts

Lengthy lectures can overwhelm a student's cognitive capacity, particularly in CS1 courses, where students often struggle with foundational programming principles. Bytesized is a lecture snippet tool that curates short, targeted videos from lecture recordings in response to student queries. We deployed Bytesized in a CS1 course in C, which revealed a high engagement with the tool as a way to supplement the consolidation of core concepts. The early results suggest that tools such as Bytesized are key in providing CS1 students with the necessary support to develop effective study strategies to consolidate fundamental programming teachings.