Reply to post: Co-pilot is not the problem the course is

Co-pilot is not the problem the course is

If a CS course has a problem with co-pilot then there is already a problem with the design of the CS course.

Lets take the "find the nth element of a Fibonacci series"

I did a search on that exact text and found multiple examples here is one web page https://prepinsta.com/c-program/fibonacci-series-up-to-n-using-c/. So copy one of those examples make some superficial changes (formatting, variable names) job done. If the code is going to fail a plagiarism detector then so will Co-pilot generated or a students own code as it will look the same, there are only so many ways that that code can be written.

I think Co-Pilot may not be the best way to cheat on that problem. Normally these sort of assignments are to show that you understand what you have been taught, for example Recursion. So for the Fibonacci problem the solution would have to use recursion. There is no guarantee that Co-Pilot generated code will use recursion, the webpage above has four examples one of which is recursive. The last thing you want is for Co-pilot to produce some novel solution. "Copilot is different, he said, "It actually generates novel solutions."

So if your CS course awards marks for assignments that only require code then you have the problem that a student may not have produced the code themselves. Be that web search or Co-pilot. Even before the internet if one student could produce working code for an assignment they all will. Just think about it. ;)