Arron Huang

AI in the Classroom: Lessons Learned from ICS 314 Software Engineering

17 Dec 2024

AI

I. Introduction

AI is an incredibly powerful tool, and saying it won’t take over the world would be an understatement. Throughout my time in ICS 314, I’ve used AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude AI to help enhance my learning experience. These AI tools have helped me with fixing errors within my code, answering questions that I did not have answers to right away, and completing assignments in a timely manner. The availability of AI has truly been a lifesaver, helping me realize that there’s always something out there to assist you.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

For the Experience WOD’s, I have used ChatGPT and Claude AI for the Digits experiences. There were some instances when I didn’t know why the pictures weren’t showing up, or why something wasn’t centered correctly. AI definitely gave me useful results for this bit.

For the in-class practice WOD’s, I have never used AI tools to accomplish them. In-class practice WOD’s gave me the opportunity to see what I can do on my own without the need of any help. And when I actually felt like I needed the help, instead of using AI tools, I would ask my fellow classmates or the professor. Using AI would honestly defeat the purpose of in-class practice WOD’s, as they weren’t graded.

For the in-class WOD’s, I used ChatGPT and Claude AI. Given that there were time constraints, I felt like it was necessary to use AI tools. Using AI tools to do these WOD’s were as simple as pasting in the instructions and getting the answer. I would almost always get the right solution. Most of the in-class WOD’s were similar to the in-class practice ones, so I would use those as my starting point. So, I would say the usefulness of AI was extremely high when doing these in-class WOD’s.

When writing essays, I have used very little AI. The only times when I’ve used AI to help me write an essay was when I was stuck on what to write about or how to rephrase something so that it would sound better. Mostly, I would ask ChatGPT/Claude AI to summarize what I needed to write by pasting in the little prompt and it would give me bullet points/ideas on what to write and where to start. I would use it as a stepping stone to start writing my essays. Overall, its usefulness is high, as it has helped me a lot in writing these essays.

For the final project, I have used ChatGPT or Claude AI. I asked AI to give me starting points on how to create a page or on how to fix certain ESLint errors. Those were mainly the only reasons I have used AI for the final project. Overall, the use of AI has made it more efficient for me to complete my part of the project in a timely manner.

When learning a concept or a tutorial, I have used AI to help me understand it better. When we were learning how to create a layout that is used on multiple pages for Next.js, AI gave me a really good explanation on how to efficiently code it. Overall, the usefulness of AI was high, as it gave me a better understanding of the material that we need to know.

Honestly, I have never really answered a question in-class or on Discord. So, the use of AI is invalid here.

I may have answered at least one smart-question, but the answer to that question was very simple and did not need AI to find a solution. So, the use of AI here is also invalid.

When given coding examples, I have used AI to help me. I would honestly just paste them into the AI tool and it would spit out a direct answer for me. It did not help me to learn the material, but it helped me progress further with what I was trying to learn. So, I would say that the usefulness was moderate, as it didn’t give me an opportunity to learn the material myself.

I have used AI to help me explain code only because I am really bad at explaining things and AI tools would give me a clear and easy-to-understand response that I could use to explain code. So, the usefulness of AI in this scenario is high.

When writing code, I have used AI when I needed to write repetitive code. But, I would always review it afterwards to see if there were any discrepancies. Overall, the usefulness is high, as it saves a lot of time for me.

When documenting code, AI has helped me to make sure it was detailed enough to the point the reader will understand it clearly.

I used AI to fix some of the errors that I was getting while coding. It gave me really good solutions to the problem. Overall, the usefulness was high, as it helped me a lot throughout the class.

I have used AI to give me ideas on how to answer our smart goals. I would say the usefulness is moderate.

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

Using AI has definitely improved my learning experience. The swift and clear responses that AI tools are able to provide help me understand the material better with their explanations and such. But, I’ve come to realize that using AI too much is not a good thing. It prevents me from exploring and finding my own way out of things. But overall, it has truly helped me a lot throughout the course.

IV. Practical Applications:

I feel like outside of ICS314, I have utilized AI to help me create a very simple website. I used the Next.js application template. Letting the AI know that I am using the Next.js template, it provided me with a “starter kit” to start building it from the template. Like I’ve said before, AI applications are a really powerful tool in basically doing many things.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

Sometimes, the AI would not provide me with enough information or it would just straight up give me the wrong information. I feel like AI is still not fully developed yet and could use some improvement. I feel like potential opportunities are, for example, offering personalized coding assistance, or automated feedback on homework assignments. Or maybe, you can use AI-generated code to use as an example to learn the material.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

When you are taught using traditional teaching methods, you will need to use critical thinking skills and you will be taught by a real person. When you use AI-enhanced approaches, you will instantly be given a computer-generated response that could sometimes be wrong. If you were to incorporate AI-enhanced learning with traditional teaching, it would make for a better learning environment!

VII. Future Considerations:

I feel like AI is still evolving and can do even better things in the future. And also, AI still needs improvement to provide better solutions to things. Some challenges are that when you ask it to do everything for you, it won’t literally do everything for you. AI programs have limitations on what they can do.

VIII. Conclusion:

Throughout the course, AI has helped me out tremendously. Without the use of AI, I honestly don’t think I would have survived the course. Sometimes, AI was not needed, as I already had the understanding of doing certain tasks. A recommendation for optimizing the integration of AI in future courses is maybe implementing some AI-based code as examples for us to learn from. That would be great and would help us along the way in our software engineering journey.