CSE 110 | AI-Policy

CSE 110: AI Policy

Overview: Preparing for AI-Assisted Software Development

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that helps experienced software engineers work faster and do more. Because of this, companies need fewer low-skill developers, since skilled ones with AI can do the same work more easily.

With this in mind, it is critical that you become a high-skilled developer that knows how to solve problems and use AI as a tool. To develop these skills, you need to practice writing lots of code on your own and working through problems. In future courses, once you have mastered the fundamentals from this course, you will learn to use AI to generate all or part of your programs.

On the other hand, if you use AI to generate the programs in this course, you will not develop the skills you need and you will not be prepared to get a job in the current market.

Do not use AI to generate the code for your programs in this course.

Using AI to generate your programs is a violation of the course AI policy and may result in receiving a 0 on the assignment, failing the course, or being removed from the program.

If you use AI to generate your code for you, you will not learn how to program, which will prevent you from being able to be successful in later courses and in your career.

If you need help on the assignment or have questions about AI use, please ask your instructor.

How this course will help you prepare

The Software Development program at BYU-Idaho will help you become an effective software engineer who can use AI. To reach that goal, you need to deeply learn about programming so that you can guide the AI and make judgments about what it produces.

CSE 110 will help you develop these skills in two important ways:

Check Your Understanding Quizzes: The quizzes in each module will present code and other situations the way AI might, and you will learn to describe what is happening and to evaluate the quality of the solution. It is critical that you do not use AI to answer these questions for you, because then you will not develop the skill to use AI as a programming tool.
Programming Projects: In order to develop a strong foundation for future programming, you need to practice writing lots of code yourself. Programming must become so natural to you that you can recognize when a solution or line of code is slightly wrong. For this reason, it is critical that you do not use AI to generate code for these projects. If you use AI to generate your code, you will miss out on the practice you need.

In addition to practice, the programming projects also help you develop the problem-solving and troubleshooting skills you need to produce a solution to a complex problem. In the future you will use AI to generate much of the code, but when you do, you will need to know how to approach the problem and also have the ability to trouble-shoot the code that is produced by AI. When experienced programmers use AI, it very rarely works the first time. For this reason it is critical that you do not use AI to generate the code for your programming projects in this course, because you will not develop the skills necessary to trouble-shoot the AI code in situations that are more complex in the future.

Using AI as a Learning Assistant

While you should not use AI to generate code or to answer quiz questions, it can be a powerful tutor to help you learn and understand the concepts. Experienced software engineers use AI all the time to help them learn to do things they haven't done before.

You are strongly encouraged to ask AI questions about the topics and the problems you are facing. Then, once you understand the concept better, you can set the tool aside and write the code yourself or answer the question yourself.

The following are recommended ways to use AI as a learning assistant:

Ask questions about the topic: "I am a student learning about loops in Python. Can you explain when I should use for loops instead of while loops?"
Ask for more help: "I still don't quite understand. Can you explain it again and use some examples?"
Ask for practice: "Can you generate some simple practice problems for this topic?"
Ask for feedback: "I just completed the following program, do you have any suggestions on how I can improve it?"
Ask for what certain lines of code do: "In the following code, can you explain what the line with the `file open` command does?"
Ask about other topics "How could I make this program output have colors?"

Acceptable use of AI in CSE 110

While you should not use AI to generate code, it can be a powerful tutor to help you learn and understand the concepts. Experienced software engineers use AI all the time to help them learn to do things they haven't done before.

You are strongly encouraged to ask AI questions about the topics and the problems you are facing. Then, once you understand the concept better, set the tool aside and write the code yourself.

The following defines the acceptable use of AI in CSE 110:

✅ Use AI as a learning assistant. Converse with it like a tutor who is helping you understand a concept, but not giving you the answer.
❌ Do not use AI to generate any code that you use in your projects. You should type every word of these projects yourself.
❌ Do not use AI to give you the answers to quiz questions. You may ask AI about the concepts of the quiz, but you should not directly ask AI the question of the quiz.
✅ Use AI for suggestions and feedback. After you finish a program, ask about things you could do to make it even better.