Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Debugging Code in Claude

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05/14/2025 Added

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In this installment of AI in the Classroom, discover how AI assists the code debugging process in Claude. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) | College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE)

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[00:00:00.270]Coming up on "AI in the Classroom,"
[00:00:02.580]we are the debugging codes in Claude.
[00:00:04.353](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.930]Hi, my name is Guy Trainin,
[00:00:11.640]a professor here at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:14.670]And my name is Boakye Williams, a grad student at UNL.
[00:00:18.570]And today, Williams is actually going to teach me
[00:00:22.410]how to debug code in Claude,
[00:00:26.880]which is one of our favorite AI.
[00:00:32.460]So let's go. Show me what you've got.
[00:00:34.500]So Claude is one of the favorite programming
[00:00:38.803]or one of the AI that is best
[00:00:42.690]in debugging or creating codes.
[00:00:45.450]And so as teachers,
[00:00:48.450]sometimes we will try to help our students with some codes.
[00:00:54.300]If you want them to know what to do with a certain code
[00:00:57.870]or what to do,
[00:00:59.040]we can give them a list of code that is having errors.
[00:01:04.500]And I'll ask them to debug them
[00:01:07.830]to find those errors that are in the code.
[00:01:10.590]And so, here I give Claude the first prompt
[00:01:13.170]that I'm going to provide it with some codes
[00:01:16.890]that I would need it to debug it for me.
[00:01:19.170]And it said, okay, sure.
[00:01:20.760]First I need to specify the programming language,
[00:01:24.840]what the code is supposed to do,
[00:01:27.090]any error messages that I've been seeing.
[00:01:29.880]But I didn't do any of that,
[00:01:31.410]but I just provided it with the list of the codes.
[00:01:34.560]And here you can see the first code.
[00:01:38.880]You can copy the code from the programming language
[00:01:41.040]that you are working on, whether in C++,
[00:01:45.060]or even if an HTML document or any programming language.
[00:01:49.740]You can just copy the code and provide it with Claude
[00:01:54.240]to find the errors for you.
[00:01:56.370]So here I have the first code, one, age_1 = "23"
[00:02:02.970]and the second code is 2surname = Boakye,
[00:02:07.710]and the last code is Firstname = Williams.
[00:02:10.650]So it assessed the code
[00:02:13.170]and found nothing wrong with the first code,
[00:02:17.130]which is age = "23."
[00:02:20.550]And that is the correct code,
[00:02:22.110]but with the surname,
[00:02:25.440]it actually added quotation marks around the name,
[00:02:29.970]seeing that the name is a string,
[00:02:35.010]and strings should come with quotation marks.
[00:02:39.150]And the last one, first name.
[00:02:41.490]So here we can just see what Claude said.
[00:02:46.710]If you want to use number in variable names,
[00:02:49.560]you can put it at the end of the line
[00:02:53.400]instead of at the beginning.
[00:02:55.020]For example, surname2 rather than just saying 2surname.
[00:02:59.340]So that was the error that was found in the code.
[00:03:03.630]So before we jump to the next thing,
[00:03:05.700]because, so you gave it code, it asked what language,
[00:03:09.600]but actually it was able to detect the language on its own.
[00:03:13.050]Now, you don't want to trust it
[00:03:14.880]because we do have computer languages
[00:03:17.550]that are somewhat similar,
[00:03:18.930]and you wanna make sure that it's reading the right one.
[00:03:22.290]You want to make sure that it knows this is Python,
[00:03:24.810]this is Java, this is HTML, whatever we're using,
[00:03:29.430]just to make sure that it's not steering you
[00:03:31.410]in the wrong direction.
[00:03:32.340]What I love though, that you showed me
[00:03:34.860]that I didn't know it did is it actually explains,
[00:03:38.130]and it doesn't just fix it,
[00:03:40.320]it actually explains what you need to do,
[00:03:43.800]and as a result it becomes a great learning device.
[00:03:47.250]Because now it's not just saying here's, you know,
[00:03:50.580]here's the right code. Here is our code.
[00:03:52.140]But actually it walks you through the thinking.
[00:03:55.110]It's like, okay, if you want integer,
[00:03:57.210]it needs to be this way.
[00:03:58.200]If you want it to be a string, you need to do that.
[00:04:01.170]If you want it numbers part of the variable name,
[00:04:05.040]it's got to show up after, not before.
[00:04:07.290]So it really is, you can see how
[00:04:10.050]after you interact a few times, you take those pointers
[00:04:14.370]and you can start implementing it in your code.
[00:04:16.800]So it really does scaffold a little bit of the learning.
[00:04:23.160]So what's the next thing?
[00:04:25.560]These are the few codes that I provided,
[00:04:27.750]but actually you can add a long string of code
[00:04:31.110]for it to debug it and find the errors for you.
[00:04:35.430]And you can do this as an assessment
[00:04:37.650]for your students in the classroom.
[00:04:39.960]You give them a list of codes,
[00:04:41.760]let's say 1 to 10 with errors,
[00:04:43.860]and then they will debug it and find the errors themselves.
[00:04:47.520]And they will also learn something
[00:04:50.550]from what Claude will provide them with the result
[00:04:54.720]and the explanations in the solution and the code.
[00:04:59.460]And I love what you're talking about here
[00:05:01.560]because one of the things
[00:05:02.700]that we struggled with the most with AI
[00:05:04.830]is if it just gives me an answer, then I'm not learning.
[00:05:08.550]One of the things we can do as teachers
[00:05:10.350]is we can give that text,
[00:05:13.170]allow students to debug individually and then with Claude,
[00:05:18.690]but then we have to insist on them actually explaining it.
[00:05:22.530]So it's not enough that you got it right,
[00:05:24.960]tell me what you learned from it
[00:05:26.940]or tell me what the mistake was
[00:05:28.980]and how you would avoid it in the future.
[00:05:31.230]So that creating that discussion,
[00:05:34.200]that instructional conversation
[00:05:37.050]is really where understanding happens.
[00:05:42.300]Because when you have to explain it to somebody else,
[00:05:45.090]you have to actually properly process the information.
[00:05:49.290]Whereas here, sometimes you can just, yes, yes, yes,
[00:05:52.230]there's an explanation,
[00:05:53.250]but I'm just going to grab the answer and put it in.
[00:05:56.010]So it's through instructional conversation
[00:05:59.070]that the magic of learning, deep learning, actually happens.
[00:06:04.290]So this is with short snippets of code. Can you do it?
[00:06:07.440]You started saying about longer snippets of code.
[00:06:10.050]What happens with longer snippets of code?
[00:06:12.630]Yes, so actually you can even ask Claude
[00:06:17.700]to give you some codes yourself.
[00:06:19.890]You just give it give me a list of some error codes
[00:06:23.370]in Python using variables or when teaching variables.
[00:06:27.780]And it can give you that
[00:06:29.370]and you can use it to assess your students.
[00:06:31.350]So it can give you a long snippet of code
[00:06:36.090]and then you can provide it
[00:06:39.090]or give it to your students to debug it for you.
[00:06:43.050]All right. Yeah.
[00:06:44.070]So today on "AI in the Classroom,"
[00:06:46.770]we did a little bit of debugging your code with Claude.
[00:06:52.710]And what is really, really fascinating is thinking about it
[00:06:57.120]as a support for teaching computer science,
[00:06:59.430]not just as a way to fix your own code, which is important.
[00:07:02.670]But as a way, what do you do with it
[00:07:04.770]as a teacher who teaches computer science,
[00:07:06.870]who teaches coding,
[00:07:07.920]and wants students to start using the debugging features
[00:07:12.720]without losing the ability to do the work themselves.
[00:07:17.070]And we'll see you next time.
[00:07:18.136](upbeat music)

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Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Debugging Code in Claude

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