Fostering Creativity: Student-Generative AI Teaming in an Open-Ended CS0 Assignment

The increasing ubiquity of web-based generative artificial intelligence technologies necessitates that all students experience teaming with such technologies -- exploring their strengths and limitations and learning how to create synergy with them. To aid in this effort, we designed an open-ended generative AI project for the freshmen taking our general-education introduction to computing course. Students were required to team with generative AI to create something beyond what they alone (or the AI alone) could accomplish. Upon completion, students submitted a short written critical analysis documenting their experiences and presented a three-minute demonstration of their project in class. Despite limited course coverage of AI and generative AI prior to this project, we were impressed by the creativity and sophistication of the submitted final products as well as the breadth of generative AI tools explored. Student reflections on the experience illustrated numerous insights into the strengths and limitations of the tools they employed. Our results underscore that students can learn about the benefits and limitations of generative AI in as little as a single assignment and that covering such topics need not require extensive amounts of course time and resources.