A Case Study: Crowd Sourced AI Programming [Research in Progress; Abstract]

Abstract

Aim/Purpose: To examine crowd-sourced programming as an experiential learning, instructional medium. The goal is to provide real-time, real-world, artificial intelligence programming without textbook instructional materials. Background: Open source software has resulted in loosely knit communities of global software developers that work together on a software project. Taking open source software development to another level, current trends have expanded into crowd sourced development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This project explored the use of Amazon Alexa’s tools and web resources to learn AI software development. Methodology: This project incorporated experiential and inquiry educational methods that combined direct experience with crowd-sourced programming while requiring students to take risks, solve problems, be creative, make mistakes and resolve them. The instructor facilitated the learning experience through weekly meetings and structured reports that focused on goal setting and analysis of problems. This project is part of ongoing research into small group creative works research that provides students with real-world coding experience. Contribution: Undergraduate students successfully programmed an introductory level social bot using experiential learning methods and a crowd-sourced programming project (Amazon Alexa social bot). Findings: A of the experience and findings will be included with final paper release summary Recommendations for Practitioners: Crowd sourced programming provides opportunities and can be harnessed for semester long coding projects to develop student programming skills through direct involvement in real open sourced projects. Recommendation for Researchers: There is a high rate of failure associated with software projects, yet pro-gramming courses continue to be taught as they have been for decades. More research needs to be done and instructional materials developed for the undergraduate level that use real programming projects. Can we improve the rate of success for software projects by requiring expe-riential education in our courses? Impact on Society: Crowd-sourced programming is an opportunity for students to learn to program and build their portfolio with real world experience. Students participating in crowd-sourced programming are involved in creative works research and gain experience developing real-world software. Future Research: Future research will explore experiential learning such as crowd-sourced and other open source programming opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in real software development.