Learning to code when AI assistants already master the skill
The revelation got here in the summertime of 2023, once I took on a highschool student as a summer intern. Their task was to develop a machine learning model to predict air quality in our city, using Jupyter notebooks, basic Python and scikit-learn.
In the future, I used to be discussing the performance of the algorithm with my intern and asked them to vary a graph: as an alternative of plotting the expected versus true values, I asked them to point out the difference between the expected and true values.
The scholar switched to a different browser tab, prompted ChatGPT to “Calculate the difference between two arrays y1 and y2” and continued to repeat and paste the reply “y1 — y2” into the notebook.
At first I used to be amused that they’d ask the AI assistant for a line of code that’s so easy, and positively faster to write down yourself than to prompt, wait, and duplicate and paste. But then I began occupied with the implications of AI assistants for the best way we teach software development and the training outcomes for college students.
In what follows, I outline the implications of the rise of AI assistants for the teaching of coding skills, based on my personal experience as an undergraduate and graduate instructor. I argue for accepting AI assistants within the classroom, slightly than attempting to restrict their use. Assignments and exams should take note of the usage of AI assistants and assess skills that aren’t — yet — covered by AI. Nevertheless, students must be given the chance to develop their very own coding skills, slightly than counting on AI technology for each a part of their learning journey.
How does learning actually work?
There may be a famous quote attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius:
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Each in my very own training and in teaching others, I even have found this to be true. In education and psychology, the last a part of the quote is often known as transfer of learning [1]. Students progress through tasks of accelerating complexity…