The use of AI assistants, along with the challenges they present, has sparked significant debate within the community of computer science education. While these tools demonstrate the potential to support students' learning and instructors' teaching, they also raise concerns about enabling unethical uses by students. Previous research has suggested various strategies aimed at addressing these issues. However, they concentrate on the introductory programming courses and focus on one specific type of problem. The present research evaluated the performance of ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art AI assistant, at solving 187 problems spanning three distinct types that were collected from six undergraduate computer science. The selected courses covered different topics and targeted different program levels. We then explored methods to modify these problems to adapt them to ChatGPT's capabilities to reduce potential misuse by students. Finally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 computer science instructors. The aim was to gather their opinions on our problem modification methods, understand their perspectives on the impact of AI assistants on computer science education, and learn their strategies for adapting their courses to leverage these AI capabilities for educational improvement. The results revealed issues ranging from academic fairness to long-term impact on students' mental models. From our results, we derived design implications and recommended tools to help instructors design and create future course material that could more effectively adapt to AI assistants' capabilities.
翻译:AI助教的使用及其带来的挑战,在计算机科学教育界引发了广泛讨论。这些工具在展现支持学生学习与教师教学潜力的同时,也引发了关于学生不当使用的担忧。先前研究已提出多种应对策略,但多聚焦于入门编程课程及特定类型问题。本研究评估了前沿AI助教ChatGPT在解决来自六门本科计算机科学课程中187道问题时的表现——这些问题涵盖三种不同类型,且所选课程涉及不同主题及对应不同编程水平。随后我们探索了如何调整问题以适配ChatGPT能力,从而减少学生潜在滥用行为。最后,我们对11位计算机科学教师进行了半结构化访谈,旨在收集他们对问题调整方法的反馈,了解他们对AI助教对计算机科学教育影响的看法,以及他们调整课程以利用AI能力改进教学的具体策略。研究结果揭示了从学术公平性到对学生思维模型长期影响等多方面问题。基于研究结果,我们提炼出设计启示,并推荐相关工具以帮助教师设计并创建未来更有效适配AI助教能力的课程材料。