How can we use GenAI tools to enhance student engagement and learning in the programming courses?

The challenge of engaging students in their learning journey is getting more urgent in this age of ubiquitous distraction. With all the potential career prospects of computer science and data science graduates, we still have more than 30% of students receive DFW grade in the fundamental programming and data science courses. Numerous interventions have been created with corresponding research studies analyzing their pros and cons in improving students learning and identifying best practices. In addition, more and more Generative AI (GenAI) tools are being created and made available nowadays. This presents a unique opportunity for us to thoughtfully integrate GenAI tools in our teaching to help students learn, instead of the wild west scenario playing out right now – students using them to cheat and plagiarize.

Dr Rizk  has created an innovative way to use generative AI (GenAI) based micro-moment activity that lasts five to forty-five minutes to engage students in all kinds of learning spaces (face-to-face in classroom, synchronous online, asynchronous virtual, or hybrid). In particular, she is taking advantage of the Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT [2, 3, 4] and design CIA (Chatgpt Interactive Activity) to introduce and assess how much student master fundamental programming and data science concepts.

The process of creating and implementing such CIA activities has the potential to be easily adapted to and adopted in many courses in Computer Science and Data Science programs. The success of this open pedagogy using GenAI-based CIA activities is outstanding. Students testimonials reflect the CIA’s huge impact on enhancing their authentic and meaningful learning as well as their high-order thinking capability according to revised Bloom’s learning taxonomy.

For more info: https://coogtube.com/cia/