The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Using GitHub Copilot to Solve Simple Programming Problems
Open accessAbstract
The teaching and assessment of introductory programming involves writing code that solves a problem described by text. Previous research found that OpenAI's Codex, a natural language machine learning model trained on billions of lines of code, performs well on many programming problems, often generating correct and readable Python code. GitHub's version of Codex, Copilot, is freely available to students. This raises pedagogic and academic integrity concerns. Educators need to know what Copilot is capable of, in order to adapt their teaching to AI-powered programming assistants. Previous research evaluated the most performant Codex model quantitatively, e.g. how many problems have at least one correct suggestion that passes all tests. Here I evaluate Copilot instead, to see if and how it differs from Codex, and look qualitatively at the generated suggestions, to understand the limitations of Copilot. I also report on the experience of using Copilot for other activities asked of students in programming courses: explaining code, generating tests and fixing bugs. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the observed capabilities for the teaching of programming.
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In the citing paper
“Given the ability of GenAI tools to generate human-like content, such as language and code, concerns regarding academic honesty and student learning have dominated discourse [16, 29, 33, 36, 55, 115, 117].”
From "I'd Never Actually Realized How Big An Impact It Had Until Now": Perspectives of University Students with Disabilities on Generative Artificial Intelligence (2025) · cites this paper as [115]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“Wermelinger [191] speculated that students may spend excessive time on prompt engineering in the hope of hitting on a successful solution rather than making progress towards the solution, which was indeed observed in the study by Prather et al. [159] in the 'shepherding' interaction pattern.”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
In the citing paper
“Automatically generated tests may be partially complete, leading students to inadequately test their code [191].”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
In the citing paper
“Wermelinger [191] observed that explanations generated by Copilot focused on a line-by-line description of what the code did rather than how it achieved the goal desired.”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
In the citing paper
“The solutions generated by AI might not be easily identified as AI-generated [160], which requires teachers to adapt and develop new teaching strategies to ensure academic integrity is maintained [191].”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
In the citing paper
“Although LLM-based tools like Copilot may serve as a useful springboard for solving CS1 problems, students still need to dedicate time to learning algorithmic thinking, program comprehension, debugging, and communication skills [191] in order to become not only proficient computing experts but also to use LLMs effectively.”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
In the citing paper
“This might be due to the use of a relatively high temperature value for these models-previous work found similar results and speculated that Copilot likely uses a lower temperature value [191].”
From The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education (2023) · cites this paper as [191]
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Citations
Cites
Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code
Chen, M., Tworek, J., Jun, H., Yuan, Q., Pinto, H. P. D. O., Kaplan, J., Edwards, H., Burda, Y., Joseph, N., Brockman, G., et al. (2021) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.03374 · Cited by 1,436
Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode
Li, Y., Choi, D., Chung, J., Kushman, N., Schrittwieser, J., Leblond, R., Eccles, T., Keeling, J., Gimeno, F., Lago, A. D., et al. (2022) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.07814 · Cited by 1,043
Learning to program = learning to construct mechanisms and explanations
Soloway, E. (1986) · CACM · doi:10.1145/6592.6594 · Cited by 615
Automatic Generation of Programming Exercises and Code Explanations Using Large Language Models
Sarsa, S., Denny, P., Hellas, A., & Leinonen, J. (2022) · Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1 · doi:10.1145/3501385.3543957 · Cited by 497
The Robots Are Coming: Exploring the Implications of OpenAI Codex on Introductory Programming
Finnie-Ansley, J., Denny, P., Becker, B. A., Luxton-Reilly, A., & Prather, J. (2022) · Proceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference · doi:10.1145/3511861.3511863 · Cited by 463
Novice programmer errors: language constructs and plan composition
Ebrahimi, A. (1994) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1006/ijhc.1994.1069 · Cited by 155
Lobb, R., & Harlow, J. (2016) · ACM Inroads · doi:10.1145/2810041 · Cited by 142
Pattern-oriented instruction and its influence on problem decomposition and solution construction
Muller, O., Ginat, D., & Haberman, B. (2007) · Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) · doi:10.1145/1268784.1268830 · Cited by 113
The recurring rainfall problem
Fisler, K. (2014) · doi:10.1145/2632320.2632346 · Cited by 112
Soloway's Rainfall Problem Has Become Harder
Simon (2013) · International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTICE) · doi:10.1109/latice.2013.44 · Cited by 61
Revisiting rainfall to explore exam questions and performance on CS1
Lakanen, A.-J., Lappalainen, V., & Isomöttönen, V. (2015) · doi:10.1145/2828959.2828970 · Cited by 17
Piwek, P., Michel Wermelinger, B., Laney, R., & Walker, R. D. (2019) · Conference on Computing Education Practice (CEP) · doi:10.1145/3294016.3294024 · Cited by 10
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Mark Chen Jerry Tworek Heewoo Jun Qiming Yuan Henrique Ponde de Oliveira Pinto Jared Kaplan Harri Edwards Yuri Burda Nicholas Joseph Greg Brockman Alex Ray Raul Puri Gretchen Krueger Michael Petrov Heidy Khlaaf Girish Sastry Pamela Mishkin Brooke Chan Scott Gray Nick Ryder Mikhail Pavlov Alethea Power Lukasz Kaiser Mohammad Bavarian Clemens Winter Philippe Tillet Felipe Petroski Such Dave Cummings Matthias Plappert Fotios Chantzis Elizabeth Barnes Ariel Herbert-Voss William Hebgen Guss Alex Nichol Alex Paino Nikolas Tezak Jie Tang Igor Babuschkin Suchir Balaji Shantanu Jain William Saunders Christopher Hesse Andrew N. Carr Jan Leike Josh Achiam Vedant Misra Evan Morikawa Alec Radford Matthew Knight Miles Brundage Mira Murati Katie Mayer Peter Welinder Bob McGrew Dario Amodei Sam McCandlish Ilya Sutskever and Wojciech Zaremba. 2021. Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2107.03374 · DOI · Paper page
- Yujia Li David Choi Junyoung Chung Nate Kushman Julian Schrittwieser Rémi Leblond Tom Eccles James Keeling Felix Gimeno Agustin Dal Lago Thomas Hubert Peter Choy Cyprien de Masson d'Autume Igor Babuschkin Xinyun Chen Po-Sen Huang Johannes Welbl Sven Gowal Alexey Cherepanov James Molloy Daniel J. Mankowitz Esme Sutherland Robson Pushmeet Kohli Nando de Freitas Koray Kavukcuoglu and Oriol Vinyals. 2022. Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2203.07814 · DOI · Paper page
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bahroun, Z., Anane, C., Ahmed, V., & Zacca, A. (2023) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su151712983 · Cited by 784
GitHub Copilot AI pair programmer: Asset or Liability?
Moradi Dakhel, A., Majdinasab, V., Nikanjam, A., Khomh, F., Desmarais, M. C., & Jiang, Z. M. (. (2023) · Journal of Systems and Software · doi:10.1016/j.jss.2023.111734 · Cited by 417
The Robots Are Here: Navigating the Generative AI Revolution in Computing Education
Prather, J., Denny, P., Leinonen, J., Becker, B. A., Albluwi, I., Craig, M., Keuning, H., Kiesler, N., Kohn, T., Luxton-Reilly, A., et al. (2023) · Proceedings of the 2023 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education · doi:10.1145/3623762.3633499 · Cited by 396
Prather, J., Reeves, B. N., Denny, P., Becker, B. A., Leinonen, J., Luxton-Reilly, A., Powell, G., Finnie-Ansley, J., & Santos, E. A. (2024) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/3617367 · Cited by 256
“Wermelinger [106] evaluated the capabilities of Copilot in the spirit of Finnie-Ainsley et al. [42] who evaluated Codex and found it to still miss the mark more often than not.”
MethodLau, S., & Guo, P. (2023) · Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research V.1 · doi:10.1145/3568813.3600138 · Cited by 241
Metadata
- Authors
- Wermelinger, M.
- Affiliations
- The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
- ORCID
- Wermelinger, Michel
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2023-03-02
- Pages
- 172-178
- OpenAlex
- W4324138978
- Cited by
- 191
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 35 · 2025: 65 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 40
- FWCI
- 57.69
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) (publishedVersion)
- Open Research Online (The Open University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Social Sciences › Education › Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Keywords
- GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, large language models, programming education, introductory programming, academic integrity, code generation, code explanation, test case generation, bug fixes, AI-assisted programming
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