Cheaters or AI-Enhanced Learners: Consequences of ChatGPT for Programming Education

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies have a long history of being used in education for motivating learners and enhancing learning. However, there have also been critiques for a too uncritical and naïve implementation of AI in education (AIED) and the potential misuse of the technology. With the release of the virtual assistant ChatGPT from OpenAI, many educators and stakeholders were both amazed and horrified by the potential consequences for education. One field with a potential high impact of ChatGPT is programming education in Computer Science (CS), where creating assessments has long been a challenging task due to the vast amount of programming solutions and support on the Internet. This now appears to have been made even more challenging with ChatGPT’s ability to produce both complex and seemingly novel solutions to programming questions. With the support of data collected from interactions with ChatGPT during the spring semester of 2023, this position paper investigates the potential opportunities and threats of ChatGPT for programming education, guided by the question: What could the potential consequences of ChatGPT be for programming education? This paper applies a methodological approach inspired by analytic autoethnography to investigate, experiment, and understand a novel technology through personal experiences. Through this approach, the authors have documented their interactions with ChatGPT in field diaries during the spring semester of 2023. Topics for the questions have related to content and assessment in higher education programming courses. A total of 6 field diaries, with 82 interactions (1 interaction = 1 question + 1 answer) and additional reflection notes, have been collected and analysed with thematic analysis. The study finds that there are several opportunities and threats of ChatGPT for programming education. Some are to be expected, such as that the quality of the question and the details provided highly impact the quality of the answer. However, other findings were unexpected, such as that ChatGPT appears to be “lying” in some answers and to an extent passes the Turing test, although the intelligence of ChatGPT should be questioned. The conclusion of the study is that ChatGPT have potential for a significant impact on higher education programming courses, and probably on education in general. The technology seems to facilitate both cheating and enhanced learning. What will it be? Cheating or AI-enhanced learning? This will be decided by our actions now since the technology is already here and expanding fast.