ICSE 2025 (series) / CSEE&T 2025 (series) / IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T) /
Do AI assistants help students write formal specifications? A study with ChatGPT and the B-Method
This paper investigates the role of AI assistants, specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in teaching formal methods (FM) to undergraduate students, using the B-method as a formal specification technique. While existing studies demonstrate the effectiveness of AI in coding tasks, no study reports on its impact on formal specifications. We examine whether ChatGPT provides an advantage when writing B-specifications and analyse student trust in its outputs. Our findings indicate that the AI does help students enhance the correctness of their specifications, with low trust correlating to better outcomes. Additionally, we identify a behavioural pattern with which to interact with ChatGPT which may influence the correctness of B-specifications.
Slides (ac.talk.2025.CSEET.ai4fm.pdf) | 1.40MiB |
Mon 28 AprDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
Mon 28 Apr
Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | |||
11:00 20mTalk | Insights from the Frontline: GenAI Utilization Among Software Engineering Students CSEE&T Rudrajit Choudhuri Oregon State University, Ambareesh Ramakrishnan Oregon State University, Amreeta Chatterjee Oregon State University, Bianca Trinkenreich Colorado State University, Igor Steinmacher NAU RESHAPE LAB, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University, Anita Sarma Oregon State University Pre-print | ||
11:20 20mTalk | Towards Implementing and Evaluating AI-Assisted Pull Requests in Software Engineering Education CSEE&T | ||
11:40 20mTalk | Do AI assistants help students write formal specifications? A study with ChatGPT and the B-Method CSEE&T Alfredo Capozucca University of Luxembourg, Daniil Yampolskyi Department of Computer Science, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Alexander Goldberg Department of Computer Science, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Maximiliano Cristiá CIFASIS, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina Pre-print File Attached |