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Add to Edge"It's not like Jarvis, but it's pretty close!" -- Examining ChatGPT's Usage among Undergraduate Students in Computer Science
Nov 16, 2023
Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Google Bard have garnered significant attention in the academic community. Previous research has evaluated these LLMs for various applications such as generating programming exercises and solutions. However, these evaluations have predominantly been conducted by instructors and researchers, not considering the actual usage of LLMs by students. This study adopts a student-first approach to comprehensively understand how undergraduate computer science students utilize ChatGPT, a popular LLM, released by OpenAI. We employ a combination of student surveys and interviews to obtain valuable insights into the benefits, challenges, and suggested improvements related to ChatGPT. Our findings suggest that a majority of students (over 57%) have a convincingly positive outlook towards adopting ChatGPT as an aid in coursework-related tasks. However, our research also highlights various challenges that must be resolved for long-term acceptance of ChatGPT amongst students. The findings from this investigation have broader implications and may be applicable to other LLMs and their role in computing education.
"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!": Student and Instructor Perspectives on the influence of LLMs on Undergraduate Engineering Education
Sep 30, 2023The rise in popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) has prompted discussions in academic circles, with students exploring LLM-based tools for coursework inquiries and instructors exploring them for teaching and research. Even though a lot of work is underway to create LLM-based tools tailored for students and instructors, there is a lack of comprehensive user studies that capture the perspectives of students and instructors regarding LLMs. This paper addresses this gap by conducting surveys and interviews within undergraduate engineering universities in India. Using 1306 survey responses among students, 112 student interviews, and 27 instructor interviews around the academic usage of ChatGPT (a popular LLM), this paper offers insights into the current usage patterns, perceived benefits, threats, and challenges, as well as recommendations for enhancing the adoption of LLMs among students and instructors. These insights are further utilized to discuss the practical implications of LLMs in undergraduate engineering education and beyond.
ChatGPT -- a Blessing or a Curse for Undergraduate Computer Science Students and Instructors?
Apr 28, 2023
ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI that can understand and generate human-like text. It can be used for a variety of use cases such as language generation, question answering, text summarization, chatbot development, language translation, sentiment analysis, content creation, personalization, text completion, and storytelling. While ChatGPT has garnered significant positive attention, it has also generated a sense of apprehension and uncertainty in academic circles. There is concern that students may leverage ChatGPT to complete take-home assignments and exams and obtain favorable grades without genuinely acquiring knowledge. This paper adopts a quantitative approach to demonstrate ChatGPT's high degree of unreliability in answering a diverse range of questions pertaining to topics in undergraduate computer science. Our analysis shows that students may risk self-sabotage by blindly depending on ChatGPT to complete assignments and exams. We build upon this analysis to provide constructive recommendations to both students and instructors.