The literature informing this project spans overlapping areas: the emergence of vibe coding as a technical paradigm, its implications for education and higher education, and methodological approaches relevant to creative and exploratory research contexts.
Recent technical literature defines vibe coding as a shift from direct code authorship towards conversational intent mediation through AI systems (Meske et al., 2025; Sarkar and Drosos, 2025). These accounts characterise vibe coding as lowering the cognitive load of programming, allowing users to prioritise goals and outcomes over syntax. While this reframing is often positioned as empowering, several authors caution that it introduces new dependencies and long-term maintenance challenges, particularly where users lack foundational coding knowledge (Maes, 2025; Ray, 2025).
Emerging educational research begins to examine how these dynamics play out in learning contexts. Studies of student–AI interaction suggest that AI-assisted coding can increase confidence and task completion for novice programmers, while also obscuring gaps in conceptual understanding (Geng et al., 2025). Horvat (2025) and Chow and Ng (2025) highlight the pedagogical opportunity of repositioning learners as creative directors rather than technical operators, though these benefits are shown to be highly context-dependent. Within academia more broadly, Crowson and Celi (2025) frame vibe coding as a pragmatic response to resource constraints, raising questions about equity, authorship, and assessment.
Within computational art education, earlier work emphasises code as a creative medium rather than a purely technical skill (Levin and Brain, 2021), with tools and interfaces playing a significant role in shaping student engagement (Mcnutt et al., 2023). This provides a useful lens for considering vibe coding not simply as a shortcut, but as another approach in the evolving relationship between artists and software tools.
Finally, critical perspectives on AI in higher education warn against unreflective adoption that risks eroding learning, agency, and trust (Purser, 2025). Taken together, this literature suggests a need for situated, student-centred research that examines how AI-assisted coding intersects with accessibility, inclusion, and creative practice, and highlights a gap in research concerning computational arts students.
Bibliography
Vibe coding: definitions and technical perspectives
Cress, L. (2025). ‘Vibe coding’ named word of the year by Collins Dictionary. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpd2y053nleo.
Horvat, M. (2025). What is Vibe coding and when should you use it (or not)?. Authorea Preprints.
Kaparthy, A. (2025). There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”… 2 February. Available at: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 [Accessed: 1 Dec 2025].
Maes, S.H. (2025). The gotchas of AI coding and vibe coding: It’s all about support and maintenance. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephane-Maes-2/publication/391568491_The_Gotchas_of_AI_Coding_and_Vibe_Coding_It’s_All_About_Support_And_Maintenance/links/6832a3e76b5a287c3044caeb/The-Gotchas-of-AI-Coding-and-Vibe-Coding-Its-All-About-Support-And-Maintenance.pdf [Accessed: 2 Dec 2025]
Meske, C., Hermanns, T., von der Weiden, E., Loser, K.U. and Berger, T. (2025). Vibe coding as a reconfiguration of intent mediation in software development: Definition, implications, and research agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.21928.
Ray, P.P. (2025). A Review on Vibe Coding: Fundamentals, State-of-the-art, Challenges and Future Directions. Authorea Preprints.
Sarkar, A. and Drosos, I. (2025). Vibe coding: programming through conversation with artificial intelligence. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.23253.
Vibe coding in education and academia
Chow, M. and Ng, O. (2025). From technology adopters to creators: Leveraging AI-assisted vibe coding to transform clinical teaching and learning. Medical Teacher, pp.1–3.
Crowson, M.G. and Celi, L.C.A. (2025). Academic Vibe Coding: Opportunities for Accelerating Research in an Era of Resource Constraint. arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00952.
Geng, F., Shah, A., Li, H., Mulla, N., Swanson, S., Raj, G.S., Zingaro, D. and Porter, L. (2025). Exploring Student-AI Interactions in Vibe Coding. arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.22614.
Horvat, M. (2025). What is Vibe coding and when should you use it (or not)? Authorea Preprints.
Computational art and creative coding education
Levin, G. and Brain, T. (2021). Code as creative medium: A handbook for computational art and design. MIT Press.
Mcnutt, A.M., Outkine, A. and Chugh, R. (2023). A study of editor features in a creative coding classroom. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp.1–15.
Critical perspectives on AI in HE
Purser, R. (2025). AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself. [online] Currentaffairs.org. Available at: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself. [Accessed 8 Dec 2025]
Methodological references
Beck, S.E. and Manuel, K. (2008). Practical research methods for librarians and information professionals. Neal-Schuman.
Wilson, V. (2012). Research methods: interviews.
Gaver, B., Dunne, T. and Pacenti, E. (1999). Design: cultural probes. interactions, 6(1), pp.21–29.
Michael, M. (2012). De-signing the object of sociology: Toward an ‘idiotic’ methodology. The Sociological Review, 60, pp.166–183.
Michael, M. (2013). The idiot. Informática na educação: teoria & prática, 16(1).
Wakeford, N. (ed.) (2012). Inventive methods. Routledge.
Gaver, W., Ovalle, L. and Plummer-Fernandez, M. (2016). Tilly and the Myth of Energy Independence.