Students’ Experiences of Using ChatGPT in an Undergraduate Programming Course

Increasing use of artificial intelligence tools in programming education calls for a deeper understanding of their effect on students’ learning. This paper presents a study that investigates the experiences of part-time undergraduate students using ChatGPT in a five-week Java programming course. After each exercise, students provided feedback via anonymous surveys in which they rated different suitability aspects of ChatGPT. The majority viewed ChatGPT positively and suitable for learning programming concepts. However, its suitability for specific implementation tasks received mixed reviews. Students found it easy to adapt ChatGPT’s generated code to the exercises’ implementation tasks. The students primarily used it for acquiring background knowledge, learning syntax and programming concepts and suggesting suitable algorithms. Yet, some abstained from using it due to concerns to not garner sufficient programming proficiency, retrieving partially incorrect or misleading generated code, preferring an independent working style, or general skepticism about its benefits. Finally, in response to our findings, we also discuss three perspective directions for improving the suitability of LLM chatbots for students in programming education.