Bedford J¹, Kim M¹, Ciyu Qin J¹

¹University Of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Open AI’s large language model (LLM) ChatGPT has significantly impacted higher education, largely due its capacity to produce text that resembles the work of humans. While there have been widespread concerns about plagiarism and misuse, few researchers have explored the effects of skilled and ethical application of these tools in educational settings. This is surprising given programs like ChatGPT can provide 24/7 student support, offer students constructive feedback, and guide them throughout the writing and research process. The aim of this student-staff collaborative presentation is to examine the efficacy of generative AI as a tool to support students in the research and writing process in order to determine whether use of these tools can support student’s language and learning. As part of our study we performed a linguistical analysis on the written work of a student pre and post use of ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4 in a personalised, autonomous learning environment (Kim, 2023). This allowed us to measure whether the student’s language skills improved or declined as a result of using ChatGPT. We then analysed the student’s own reflections on using generative AI via self-reporting. Finally, we performed an interaction analysis, examining the specific prompts the student had used, the output they received, and what they learned from this process. It is concluded that responsible and ethical use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, can improve students’ learning and language skills, allowing students to build confidence and increase their motivation, while fostering an autonomous learning environment.