ChatGPT in the Classroom. Exploring Its Potential and Limitations in a Functional Programming Course

In November 2022, OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT - a chatbot based on supervised and reinforcement learning. Not only can it answer questions emulating human-like responses, but it can also generate code from scratch or complete coding templates provided by the user. ChatGPT can generate unique respo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of human-computer interaction Vol. 40; no. 22; pp. 7743 - 7754
Main Author: Popovici, Matei-Dan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Norwood Taylor & Francis 16.11.2024
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc
Subjects:
Artificial intelligence
Chatbots
Classrooms
Coding
College students
Colleges & universities
empirical studies of programming and software engineering
Functional programming
Generative artificial intelligence
Homework
human language technologies in program development
Human-computer interaction
Learning and generative AI
Machine learning
Plagiarism
Reinforcement
Students
Teaching
ISSN:1044-7318, 1532-7590, 1044-7318
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In November 2022, OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT - a chatbot based on supervised and reinforcement learning. Not only can it answer questions emulating human-like responses, but it can also generate code from scratch or complete coding templates provided by the user. ChatGPT can generate unique responses which render any traditional anti-plagiarism tool useless. Its release has ignited a heated debate about its usage in academia, especially by students. We have found, to our surprise, that our students at POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest (UPB) have been using generative AI tools (ChatGPT and its predecessors) for solving homework, for at least 6 months. We therefore set out to explore the capabilities of ChatGPT and assess its value for educational purposes. We used ChatGPT to solve all our coding assignments for the semester from our UPB Functional Programming course. We discovered that, although ChatGPT provides correct answers in 68% of the cases, only around half of those are legible solutions which can benefit students in some form. On the other hand, ChatGPT has a very good ability to perform code review on student programming homework. Based on these findings, we discuss the pros and cons of ChatGPT in a teaching environment, as well as means for integrating GPT models for generating code reviews, in order to improve the code-writing skills of students.
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ISSN:1044-7318
1532-7590
1044-7318
DOI:10.1080/10447318.2023.2269006