Manuscript received March 30, 2023; revised May 11, 2023; May 18, 2023.
Abstract—The world has evolved dramatically in the last
several decades and continues to do so. ChatGPT has sparked
intense speculation and interest among academic stakeholders
about how this emerging technology will transform higher
education. In particular, there is ambiguity among researchers
and teaching professionals on how to deal with the integration of
natural language processing models (e.g., ChatGPT) practically
and ethically. The use of ChatGPT is an emerging area of
interest that presently lacks the perspective of students on this
new technology. Thus, an exploratory study design was applied
as a methodological frame to investigate the problem empirically.
Semi-structured interview data was gathered from current
university students to thematically analyze the phenomenon.
The thematic analysis revealed three themes: (1) support for
autonomous learning, (2) digital and artificial tutoring, and (3)
academic misconduct and ethical considerations. The article
presents theoretical and managerial implications and advances
the discussion about natural language processing models in
higher education. Moreover, the study contributes to the body of
knowledge by closing a theoretical gap in the literature on how
university students utilize artificial chatbots for and during their
studies.
Index Terms—Higher education, artificial intelligence,
chatbots, undergraduate students, interview study, ChatGPT
The authors are with the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Prince of
Songkla University, Phuket 83120 Thailand.
Correspondence: kevin.f@phuket.psu.ac.th (K.F.)
Cite: Kevin Fuchs* and Veronica Aguilos, "Integrating Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Empirical Insights from Students about Using ChatGPT," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 9, pp. 1365-1371, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).