Analysis of the Educational Effects Regarding the Use of ChatGPT in Compulsory Basic Coding Subjects

Computational thinking and basic coding education are recognized as essential competencies for living in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Therefore, there has been a recent trend in universities to expand the number of required general education classes dealing with basic coding and AI data analysis. Computational thinking and coding are unfamiliar fields to college freshmen, so they often find these fields of study difficult. In addition, there is a large variation in class understanding depending on the student's elementary, middle, and high school learning background, making it difficult to administer the course as a required liberal arts course. To solve these problems, instructors can consider introducing the ChatGPT service, an AI-generated chatbot. In this study, the effectiveness of ChatGPT was analyzed by applying ChatGPT to some classes in the compulsory liberal arts subject in computational thinking at S University in Seoul. Out of a total of 75 classes, 7 classes included the use of ChatGPT in the curriculum and actively utilized it, while the remaining 68 classes used the existing general method. An end-of-semester student survey was conducted, and 966 students participated in the survey. Following this, a t-test was performed to compare the differences in satisfaction and perception between the two groups. As a result of the analysis, this study confirmed that the classes that actively used ChatGPT brought about a positive perception among the students in terms of their satisfaction with the course and their awareness of ChatGPT use. Moreover, this study confirmed a statistically significant difference between the students’ perception and satisfaction with this chatbot. The use of ChatGPT in basic coding has positive aspects, but on the other hand, it may have a negative effect on developing one's capabilities as students become dependent on AI chatbots. In the future, there is a need to develop and operate a more systematic ChatGPT application curriculum and to analyze its effectiveness.