Physics Education and Artificial Intellegence - Using ChatGPT to Teach Modeling and Coding

Tools using Artificial Intelligence are becoming readily available to students. Faculty and administrators at many colleges and universities are debating if such tools should be used, as well as how they can be used both effectively and ethically. In this project, introductory college physics students were instructed on the use and abilities of artificial intelligence tools, such as chatbots. The chatbot used in this research was ChatGPT. ChatGPT (chat generative pre-trained transformer), is a chatbot that students can utilize to learn how to effectively code in the coding program, Python. Before using ChatGPT to code, the students are given a pre-test survey to determine how well they know ChatGPT, how well they know how to code, and specifically how well they know how to code in Python. Survey questions were also presented to the students in order to judge their familiarity of chatbots and their previous use in other classes. After learning with ChatGPT, a post-test survey is conducted to determine how well the students have learned to code in Python as well as how effective ChatGPT was in assisting their study.

The students were also tasked with producing a proposal for the establishment of policies governing the use Artificial Intelligence in their research and in their course work This proposal was presented to the Physics Program and Provost for review and editing.