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Reimagining Introductory Programming in the Age of Generative AI

James Prather
Abilene Christian University

Abstract: Generative AI is ruining everything. With nearly zero effort, it can design, write, and debug all of a student's work. As a result, students learn nothing, pass with perfect grades, and become dependent on this new technology. Is this the end of computer science? Perhaps, if we keep doing what we've always done. Clearly we can't ignore it and we can't keep it out of the hands of our students. What can we do? In this talk, Dr. James Prather will use an historical lens to look through computing history at the long-running discourse of natural language programming and derive from it some ideas about how to proceed in the era of generative AI. Maybe our present circumstances are far better than they appear.

Bio: James Prather is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Abilene Christian University. He holds a masters degree in neuroscience, two masters degrees is theology, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. His primary research area is in Human-Computer Interaction in the domain of Computer Science Education. Over the last five years he has won five best paper awards for his research on novice programmer metacognition, interaction with and design of error messages, and user interaction with generative AI. James is currently a Program Co-Chair of the SIGCSE Technical Symposium, the largest computing education research conference in the world, on the program committees for several other conferences in various roles, and on the advisory board for GitHub Education. His extensive consulting experience includes research for Google and UX research for iHeartRadio. James lives in Abilene, Texas with his wife and four kids. He enjoys traveling with his family, camping, and reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, sometimes all at the same time.

This guest talk is hosted by Assistant Professor Juho Leinonen, Department of Computer Science.