  The application of Artificial intelligence for teaching and learning in the
academic sphere is a trending subject of interest in the computing education.
ChatGPT, as an AI-based tool, provides various advantages, such as heightened
student involvement, cooperation, accessibility and availability. This paper
addresses the prospects and obstacles associated with utilizing ChatGPT as a
tool for learning and assessment in undergraduate Computer Science curriculum
in particular to teaching and learning fundamental programming courses.
Students having completed the course work for a Data Structures and Algorithms
(a sophomore level course) participated in this study. Two groups of students
were given programming challenges to solve within a short period of time. The
control group (group A) had access to text books and notes of programming
courses, however no Internet access was provided. Group B students were given
access to ChatGPT and were encouraged to use it to help solve the programming
challenges. The challenge was conducted in a computer lab environment using PC2
environment. Each team of students address the problem by writing executable
code that satisfies certain number of test cases. Student teams were scored
based on their performance in terms of number of successful passed testcases.
Results show that students using ChatGPT had an advantage in terms of earned
scores, however there were inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the submitted
code consequently affecting the overall performance. After a thorough analysis,
the paper's findings indicate that incorporating AI in higher education brings
about various opportunities and challenges.
