CS50, the World's Most Popular Online Programming Class, Turns to AI for Help

"The world's most popular online learning course, Harvard University's CS50, is getting a ChatGPT-era makeover," reports Bloomberg: CS50, an introductory course in computer science attended by hundreds of students on-campus and over 40,000 online, plans to use artificial intelligence to grade assignments, teach coding and personalize learning tips, according to its Professor David J. Malan... Even with more than 100 real-life teaching assistants, he said it had become difficult to fully engage with the growing number of students logging in from different time zones and with varying levels of knowledge and experience. "Providing support tailored to students' specific questions has been a challenge at scale, with so many more students online than teachers," said Mr Malan, 46.

His team is now fine-tuning an AI system to mark students' work, and testing a virtual teaching assistant to evaluate and provide feedback on students' programming. The virtual teaching assistant asks rhetorical questions and offers suggestions to help students learn, rather than simply catching errors and fixing coding bugs, he said. Longer term, he expects this to give human teaching assistants more time for in-person or Zoom-based office hours...

Mr Malan said CS50's use of AI could highlight its benefits for education, particularly in improving the quality and access of online learning — an industry that Grand View Research forecasts to grow to $348 billion by 2030, nearly tripling from 2022. "Potentially, AI is just hugely enabling in education," he said.

Depends on what's meant by "AI"

[postbigbang]

If there is referential integrity to the AI chosen, so much the better.

Otherwise, the quality of the course and its value goes down. If quality control can't be audited, then the use of "AI" should be discontinued because it could teach bad coding practices and become detrimental to learning the basics correctly.

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[znrt]

i'd guess the value of this course in particular has more to do with prestige and curriculum than with what lecturers specifically provide in terms of human (online) interaction. the mere fact that they want to sell courses beyond their staff's capacity already makes very clear they consider this interaction accessory. that they finally decide to support/replace it with chatgpt is just anecdotal.

makes sense, if u ask me, in general a really good teacher is worth gold but you don't really need tutors to lear

Re:Depends on what's meant by "AI"

[postbigbang]

Your bar is low, and should be studiously higher.

These are neophytes handling data that might be yours one day, and you're acknowledging that a little sleaze is OK.

Bad policy, in my estimation. YMMV.

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[postbigbang]

Sorry, didn't realize that English was your second language.

Let me be explicit: ChatGPT is a garbage reference source that introduces uncertain skillsets when interjected into courseware. Garbage in, garbage out. It's use demeans the value of the course and turns out dubious results, below a standard of quality that any coding course should offer.

The use of the reference of the word "bar" implies the hurdles, or referential and metaphorical reach one must make to accomplish a goal.

Although the bar you may b

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[znrt]

yeah, well, it appears harvard university doesn't give a flying fig about your referential integrity. which was my point which you missed. there goes your high bar, sir.

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[postbigbang]

But you see, no one is surprised, the woosh of your irony. Harvard is not a high bar. Harvard is bought and paid for, their integrity a myth, the evidence cited incarnate.

Others do care, the different level of bar now vivid.

Said in the vernacular:

Fucking Harvard can't fund real anzers, so dey hire bots, dude.

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[znrt]

so harvard is bought and paid for. unlike ... which temple of vivid high bar-ness again?

Re: Depends on what's meant by "AI"

[blue trane]

Relying on personal experience, why should I
think institutionalized education is any less garbage in garbage out than AI?

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[postbigbang]

Do your own research.

Yes, educational quality ranges from awful to reasonable. I cannot know which one you received to have had such a dour experience, but others do get along.

Coding can be truly tough on a good day. It's advertised as gleeful fun, and while it can be, that's not the norm. You can go to StackOverlow and read thousands of WTFs, new almost daily.

Putting an AI into the equation spews still more garbage into the process and is beneath what should be the integrity of Harvard-- or any respectable

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[kmoser]

Don't think that just because teachers are all working off the same known curriculum that they are actually teaching it correctly, and that an AI, being a "black box", is more suspect. Quality of AI can be audited the same way quality of teachers can be audited: take a random sample and investigate how accurate they are in presenting the material.

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[postbigbang]

Your observation might be correct if ChatGPT was accurately fed data. The current audit of ChatGPT is hilarious, tragic, and inaccurate. Please goad its users into doing quality audits, as well as those in education.

a curmudgeon speaks out

[Walt Dismal]

Ahhh. I previously have commented on CS50 and disparaged it. I still think it's junk but now I realize it is nothing but a overview course, like computer science for english lit majors, CS for Dummies. A gut course. for frat boys.

I still feel that there is a far better way to teach CS, one that first addresses the idea of knowledge and data and structure of knowledge. Then you introduce ideas about computation and processing. After giving the base framework you can build upon it and go into the technology.

I think that decades ago when kids learned BASIC they got a better view of the core of things. The kids these days do not even have any feeling for where files are stored now. They believe there's some magic dwarf in their phone and they have no connection to memory chips or drives or what's in a CPU.

The onstage showmanship by the instructor for CS50 appalls me. Is this what we have come to, where a tech course has to be a form of TV entertainment? Do you get your law degree at Costco? Does the hospital have an admissions register with pictographs? God help us.

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[Waccoon]

I think that decades ago when kids learned BASIC they got a better view of the core of things.

BASIC is the worst. It's little more than assembly with some memory management thrown in. I despised it and all the damn POKE statements and really, really wish I'd had access to a C compiler before I head off to college in the 90's and was immediately thrust into HP-Unix and VAX.

When you understand the limitations of the hardware of the time, you begin to understand why BASIC was an unstructured, interpreted, tokenized language, and it's fascinating how it works. Using it, however, is awful. Modern dia

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[narcc]

Was this written by ChatGPT?

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[Waccoon]

Oh no... now even Internet arguments have been outsourced! Now what will we do all day?!

Call me skeptical for the long-term impact

[mattventura]

You'd think many of these technologies that purport to reduce effort needed from educators would reduce costs for students, but in reality, many of them directly pass the costs onto students (like those textbooks that come with a one-time-use code for their online portion). Most of these things start with good intentions, but they get corporatized and end up benefitting nobody but the seller (and whatever administrator is getting the kickbacks).