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07 May 2024
I. Introduction
So, when it comes to my experiences of incorporating AI into my studies and/or learning process, it’s the same way I feel whenever I see how popular it is to take notes on tablets instead of using notepaper. I think to myself, “Wow, that seems really useful”, and that I should try and give it a go myself. To give a little context, I graduated high school in 2016 and went to college straight after for 2 years but ended up taking a break. Then followed by covid and made the decision to resume college in 2022. A “bit” of time that has passed since my first couple years of college with certain things being very different, like the presence of AI. Even though I have no experiences with AI yet, I can see just how useful it can be in education and integrating it within our studies and use it to further increase our knowledge/capabilities of a subject, like Software Engineering. Being able to input your code into something like ChatGPT and it can help you find where your problem is. Or how you can ask questions on something you’re confused about and get answers that may explain it thoroughly so that you fully understand the concept you were confused about. Now, it’s not the case that I chose to not use AI due to personal opinions that reject the whole concept and practices of AI. It’s just that I’m still a few years behind when it comes to my studying habits. But seeing the capabilities of how some of my classmates use AI to improve their knowledge has piqued my interest.
II. Personal Experience with AI:
I have used AI in class this semester in the following areas:
1. Experience WODs e.g. E18
In the cases of experience WODs, the thought of using AI never really came to mind. When there were parts where I got stuck, I would try to go through the learning material to see if I would be able to rejog my memory and possibly come up with a solution. There were a couple times where I had to do more than one attempt and when I did fail the first time, I would learn my mistakes through watching the example videos provided by the professors. Before doing the next attempt, I would make sure that I fully understood why that was the solution instead of just copying it down. No use of AI during my process of experience WODs.
2. In-class Practice WODs
For in-class practice WODs, I didn’t use any AI because if I got stuck, I would reread through the learning material provided to us on the topic to figure out a solution. Or if that didn’t work, I would ask my classmates around me for some guidance. But if those two options didn’t provide a solution (which they normally did), what I would’ve done next is talk to the TA for our class or the Professor. While in class, I felt that it’s better to use the opportunity of having others around that can help when I get stuck on something before even coming to the conclusion of using AI for help. But of course, making sure I was not bothering/interrupting anyone.
3. In-class WODs
During the in-class WODs, due to it being a timed assessment I chose to not use AI because I’m aware that if you don’t know how to properly use AI, you may not get the solutions that you’re looking for. I may have considered it if I learned how to use AI efficiently when I get stuck. But to me, for the WODs I wanted to test myself and felt that I shouldn’t rely on anything else. With the WODs, I really wanted to improve my confidence in working under stressful scenarios and if I was to use AI in these cases, it would only be for the grade. I feel like that takes away from my main goal of what I wanted to get out of the in-class WODs.
4. Essays
When it comes to typing essays, the thought of using AI doesn’t come to mind so I’ve never used it in this scenario. I felt that it was better for me to write my essays showcasing my own voice and knowledge of the topic. I could see how using AI to check for grammatical errors can really come in handy and help teach you new ways to write. But I just type on Microsoft Word which also does a good job catching grammatical errors.
5. Final project
I have not used AI when it comes to our final project. Whenever I came across a problem, I was able to easily communicate with my groups members who were very helpful where we were able to work together to come up with a solution. But I think that the only reason I didn’t use AI in this case was due to the fact that I have no experience with AI yet. I can see how AI could help in the sense of being another source of help alongside the internet when I’m not around others.
6. Learning a concept / tutorial
For learning new concepts in ICS-314, I didn’t use AI and relied on the learning material that was provided by the professors which was very helpful for understanding new concepts. If I didn’t quite understand a certain part, revisiting that section of the article/video a few more times allowed me to fully understand it. But say I still couldn’t come to an understanding of something, the first thought would be to ask the TA, the professor, and/or classmates for a deeper explanation instead of using AI. Again, not because I think AI is bad, I just haven’t gotten used to using it yet.
7. Answering a question in class or in Discord
I didn’t use AI when it comes to answering a question that was brought up. I figured that if was able to answer a question based off my own knowledge, then I would gladly do so. But if I didn’t know the answer, I would try to think about it more and work with others to come up with the solution.
8. Asking or answering a smart-question
Like the last scenario, I didn’t use AI in this case because when it comes to answering a smart-question, I would try to help in the best way I could using my own knowledge on the topic. When it comes to asking a smart-question, I feel like it’s good to know how to properly ask a “smart-question” as that is something that I may be using in the future.
9. Coding example e.g. “give an example of using Underscore .pluck”
Instead of using AI to view coding examples, I would reference the guides and/or learning material that provided the coding examples that we needed for the topic. Those were very helpful and showed enough for me to understand how that code worked.
10. Explaining code
Like viewing coding examples, I didn’t use AI for explaining code because in the guides and learning materials, there were good descriptions of the code alongside the code itself that made it possible for me to understand how the code worked.
11. Writing code
With me not yet having any experience with AI, I didn’t think about using AI when it came to writing code. I was thinking that it’s a good way to practice what I’ve learned by applying new concepts learned into the code that I write myself.
12. Documenting code
I didn’t use AI when it comes to documenting code. I would apply what I’ve learned from coding standards to practice documenting code properly to master this skill as it will be very useful in the future. I think using AI in this sense would defeat the purpose of learning the skill myself as this skill is crucial when it comes to working with other people, helping them understand your code segments.
13. Quality assurance
While I see AI being useful in some ways as another resource to help check the quality of your code, I didn’t use AI in this sense because of my lack of experience with AI. But even if I did, I wouldn’t fully rely on AI and would want to be able to recognize the flaws in my code and be able to fix it.
14. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above
There are no other use case scenarios where I used AI in ICS-314.
III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:
While I have no experience of using AI, I can recognize the impact that it can have on one’s learning and understanding of software engineering concepts. To me, using AI is like that saying of something being a double-edged sword. Hearing about and seeing how others use AI to get solutions by providing a snippet of their code, followed by a prompt of what their trying to do is something that seems very useful. But at the same time can, it can lead to bad habits. While it’s good to have a tool that is easily accessible and can help you reach a desired outcome, I think it’s bad to fully rely on AI to a point where the user isn’t really trying to understand/apply a concept and just copies and pastes the solution provided AI. Since I have no experience yet, I don’t have much insight as to how I would truly feel while using AI. But I feel that if used properly, it can enhance the learning process of understanding new concepts in software development.
IV. Practical Applications:
One place that I commonly experience AI every day is on the music app, Spotify. The way Spotify uses AI is to make the user experience feel more personalized. Every week, there are playlists for each user like Discover Weekly and Release Radar that are created by AI that contain new songs that are similar to what the user has been listening to recently. There’s also a new thing called AI DJ where it’s an…well, an AI DJ that speaks and provides you a personalized DJ with songs that you listen to or songs of the same genre. Although, I haven’t used this feature too much yet. But with the playlists created by AI, I look forward to seeing them every week because it’s such an easy way to find new artists that I may enjoy and be up to date with new songs from artists that I listen to. AI has been implemented in a way to allow a user to find new songs that were suggested based on previous songs that were listened to and recorded by the AI.
V. Challenges and Opportunities:
Because I haven’t used AI, I don’t have any personal experiences on challenges for the uses of AI in ICS-314. But I can see the opportunities that it’ll bring by integrating it into the education of software engineering. By doing so, it can show students how to properly use AI to enhance their learning experiences and improving their coding practices. It could also expose students to the use of AI and become more familiar with its uses as it becomes more and more common in real-world practices.
VI. Comparative Analysis:
When comparing traditional teaching methods to AI-enhanced approaches in the topic of software development, I feel like as of right now AI cannot replace that. Although, I cannot say anything based off experiences from the uses of AI in an educational setting as I have not yet used it. But from what I see around me, I feel like it doesn’t provide the same experiences that traditional teaching methods provide like physical engagement, providing practices to encourage knowledge retention, and using those practices to also improve practical skill development. But what I think is that while it cannot replace it, AI can be used to enhance those aspects by serving as just another source like how we’ve gotten used to using the internet to help us find solutions to problems that we run into.
VII. Future Considerations:
Continuing from the previous statement, with the implementation of AI into the educational processes of software engineering, there needs to be emphasis on the negatives that may come along with it. Just like being taught how to go about properly using the internet for educational purpose, the same would need to be done with AI serving as another source to refer to. So, I would want to make sure that I’m learning everything properly and only using AI to act as a source to help explain something that I’m having trouble with. Because I know I feel this way, I know other’s do as well. But of course, AI isn’t perfect and from what I’ve heard around me, the results it provides can be quite questionable and that a better solution can be made without the use of AI. That’s also something that needs to be addressed is making sure that you shouldn’t just trust everything the AI spits out. Instead, use your knowledge to also assess how you can use the knowledge you just gained from AI, but also apply your own as well.
VIII. Conclusion:
In conclusion, AI is something that I know I’ll be picking up in the near future as it’s something that’ll be around for many years to come. From a perspective of someone who hasn’t used AI yet, I can see the positives and negatives that come along with the use of AI in education for software engineering. Or even education in general. But I also hear about those instances where people use AI to write their entire essay, or having AI do all the coding for them. While it’s cool that AI is able to do that, I feel that is detrimental to one’s learning process and the major drawback of AI being used in an educational setting. As AI improves as time goes on, so does the emphasis on how to properly use AI to show how you can still learn properly with the assistance of AI as long as there’s moderation and how much to rely on it.