Teaching with AI

Teaching computer science at scale can be challenging. From our experience in CS50, Harvard University's introductory course, we've seen firsthand the impactful role that generative artificial intelligence can play in education. Recognizing its potential and stakes, we integrated OpenAI's GPT into our own teaching methodology. The goal was to emulate a 1:1 teacher-to-student ratio, incorporating ''pedagogical guardrails'' to maintain instructional integrity. The result was a personalized, AI-powered bot in the form of a friendly rubber duck aimed at delivering instructional responses and troubleshooting without giving outright solutions. In this tutorial, we share our journey and offer insights into responsibly harnessing AI in educational settings. Participants will gain hands-on experience working with GPT through OpenAI's latest APIs, understanding and crafting prompts, answering questions using embedding-based search, and, finally, collaboratively building their own AI chatbot. We will also explore the growing landscape of agentic AI tools such as Claude Code, GitHub CoPilot, OpenAI Codex, discussing their applications in educational contexts. Prior knowledge of Python is beneficial but not required, as all demo source code will be provided. Ultimately, we'll not only share lessons learned from our own approach but also equip educators hands-on with the knowledge and tools with which they, too, can implement these technologies in their unique teaching environments.