AI chatbots in programming education: guiding success or encouraging plagiarism

Abstract

This study examines the impact of an AI programming assistant on students' exam scores and their tendency to accept incorrect AI-generated information. The customized AI programming assistant was developed by the authors using GPT based Large Language Model (LLM). A one group pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was utilized to answer research questions. Students were asked to take identical programming exams twice: once without AI assistance and once with the option to use the AI assistant. Results showed that the students’ average exam scores significantly increased from 48.33 to 74.47 with a large effect size (d = 1.56) when they used the AI assistance. On the other hand, when student—AI interaction logs were analyzed for a specific question, it was found that AI generated incorrect answers to 36 students. Thirty-three of these students (92%) answered the question incorrectly. Even more interestingly, despite the AI-generated response containing an obvious error, 22 of them (61%) copied and pasted the AI's response directly into the answer field. Only 3 students (8%) ignored the incorrect response generated by the AI and answered the question correctly. A significant portion of students accepting incorrect information provided by AI underscores the need for careful integration of AI tools into learning environments. Moreover, our findings emphasize the importance of specially developed AI tools rather than free tools like ChatGPT in exploring the new type of interaction between students and AI.