Lesson plans will always be in the hands of the human instructor. Always. The instructor brings the creativity to the plan. ChatGPT can do the monotonous tasks that might otherwise prohibit an instructor from considering particular elements of a plan. Here is an example.
I currently teach an introductory course on Java development targeted toward sophomore level students. It was time to review the concept of Java packages, a construct that organizes code files. The trusty book, Core Java for the Impatient*, gave a good description. I wanted to supplement it with a real world example.
My thought process was the following. Find an open source Java project. The project would be large and have many Java files and packages. I would total up the number of files, the number of directories, and use that as visual proof of the utility and need for packages. I wanted to convey that putting all your source code files in one directory simply is not a good idea. Source code files need to be organized logically by functionality. Java packages are the solution.
Could ChatGPT help me out with this task? Click here to find out what I learned.
Submitted by: Justin Del Vecchio, assistant professor, Computer Science and Cybersecurity
