research-article

Open access

Children on ChatGPT Readability in an Educational Context: Myth or Opportunity?

Authors:

Emiliana Murgia,

Maria Soledad Pera,

Monica Landoni,

Theo HuibersAuthors Info & Claims

UMAP '23 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

Pages 311 - 316

https://doi.org/10.1145/3563359.3596996

Published: 16 June 2023 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

In this work, we present the results of a preliminary exploration aiming to understand whether the use of ChatGPT in an educational context can be an asset to meet the specific needs of the students. In particular, we focus on the possibility of adapting the responses to online inquiries related to the primary school curriculum to meet the expectations of readers with different literacy levels. The analysis of feedback elicited from children (9- to 10-year-olds) in three 4th grade classrooms indicates that ChatGPT can adapt its responses to the 4th grade level. However, it still needs improvement to reach the right level of readability. Outcomes from this work can inspire future research directions involving technologies like ChatGPT to adapt learning paths to suit a broad range of students with varied cognitive skills. The potential of such tools to support teachers in their effort to adapt to individual learning needs is still to be fully exploited.

References

[1]

2023. The Artificial Intelligence Act. https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/

[2]

Mohammad Awad AlAfnan, Samira Dishari, Marina Jovic, and Koba Lomidze. 2023. Chatgpt as an educational tool: Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations for communication, business writing, and composition courses. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Technology 3, 2 (2023), 60–68.

[3]

Mohammad Aliannejadi, Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Emiliana Murgia, and Maria Soledad Pera. 2021. Children’s Perspective on How Emojis Help Them to Recognise Relevant Results: Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?. In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval. 301–305.

Digital Library

[4]

Caitlin Cassidy. 2023. Australian universities to return to ’pen and paper’ exams after students caught using AI to write essays. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/10/universities-to-return-to-pen-and-paper-exams-after-students-caught-using-ai-to-write-essays

[5]

Debby RE Cotton, Peter A Cotton, and J Reuben Shipway. 2023. Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International (2023), 1–12.

[6]

Scott A Crossley, Stephen Skalicky, Mihai Dascalu, Danielle S McNamara, and Kristopher Kyle. 2017. Predicting text comprehension, processing, and familiarity in adult readers: New approaches to readability formulas. Discourse Processes 54, 5-6 (2017), 340–359.

[7]

Michael D Ekstrand, Katherine Landau Wright, and Maria Soledad Pera. 2020. Enhancing classroom instruction with online news. Aslib Journal of Information Management 72, 5 (2020), 725–744.

[8]

Jerry Alan Fails, Maria Soledad Pera, Oghenemaro Anuyah, Casey Kennington, Katherine Landau Wright, and William Bigirimana. 2019. Query formulation assistance for kids: What is available, when to help & what kids want. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. 109–120.

Digital Library

[9]

Geneva Gay. 2013. Teaching to and through cultural diversity. Curriculum inquiry 43, 1 (2013), 48–70.

[10]

Wilson Cheong Hin Hong. 2023. The impact of ChatGPT on foreign language teaching and learning: opportunities in education and research. Journal of Educational Technology and Innovation 5, 1 (2023).

[11]

Ole Sejer Iversen, Rachel Charlotte Smith, and Christian Dindler. 2017. Child as protagonist: Expanding the role of children in participatory design. In Proceedings of the 2017 conference on interaction design and children. 27–37.

Digital Library

[12]

Enkelejda Kasneci, Kathrin Seßler, Stefan Küchemann, Maria Bannert, Daryna Dementieva, Frank Fischer, Urs Gasser, Georg Groh, Stephan Günnemann, Eyke Hüllermeier, 2023. ChatGPT for good? On opportunities and challenges of large language models for education. Learning and Individual Differences 103 (2023), 102274.

[13]

Michael R King and ChatGPT. 2023. A conversation on artificial intelligence, chatbots, and plagiarism in higher education. Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering 16, 1 (2023), 1–2.

[14]

Monica Landoni, Theo Huibers, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Emiliana Murgia, and Maria Soledad Pera. 2021. Getting to Know You: Search Logs and Expert Grading to Define Children’s Search Roles in the Classroom. In DESIRES. 44–52.

[15]

Chung Kwan Lo. 2023. What Is the Impact of ChatGPT on Education? A Rapid Review of the Literature. Education Sciences 13, 4 (2023), 410.

[16]

Ion Madrazo Azpiazu, Nevena Dragovic, and Maria Soledad Pera. 2016. Finding, understanding and learning: Making information discovery tasks useful for children and teachers. In CEUR Workshop Proceedings - Search as Learning (SAL) Workshop, co-located with ACM SIGIR 2016, Vol. 1647. CEUR-WS. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1647/SAL2016_paper_9.pdf

[17]

Ion Madrazo Azpiazu, Nevena Dragovic, Maria Soledad Pera, and Jerry Alan Fails. 2017. Online searching and learning: YUM and other search tools for children and teachers. Information Retrieval Journal 20 (2017), 524–545.

Digital Library

[18]

[18] Ethan Mollick. 2023. https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-to-make-teaching-easier

[19]

Emiliana Murgia, Zahra Abbasiantaeb, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Theo Huibers, Monica Landoni, and Maria Soledad Pera. 2023. ChatGPT in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration on the Feasibility of Adapting ChatGPT to Support Children’s Information Discovery. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP ’23 Adjunct). 8 pages.

[20]

Emiliana Murgia, Maria Soledad Pera, Monica Landoni, and Theo Huibers. 2023. Learning Technologies & AI: Who are we designing for. In CEUR Workshop Proceedings - Workshop 6: SOCIALIZE: Social and Cultural Integration with Personalized Interfaces, co-located with ACM IUI 2023., Vol. 3359. CEUR-WS, 250–253.

[21]

Jodi Pilgrim. 2019. Are we preparing students for the web in the wild? An analysis of features of websites for children. The Journal of Literacy and Technology 20, 2 (2019), 97–124.

[22]

Cathy Ringstaff and Loretta Kelley. 2002. The learning return on our educational technology investment: A review of findings from research. (2002).

[23]

Lauren M Singer and Patricia A Alexander. 2017. Reading across mediums: Effects of reading digital and print texts on comprehension and calibration. The journal of experimental education 85, 1 (2017), 155–172.

[24]

Kari Stunell. 2021. Supporting student-teachers in the multicultural classroom. European journal of teacher education 44, 2 (2021), 217–233.

[25]

Kevin R Sumayang, Kaycee Celendron, Neil P Declaro, and Deodato L Flandez Jr. 2022. MAINSTREAMING LEARNERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN A REGULAR CLASSROOM: A SCOPING REVIEW. Universal Journal of Educational Research 1, 3 (2022), 1–1.

[26]

Viriya Taecharungroj. 2023. “What Can ChatGPT Do?” Analyzing Early Reactions to the Innovative AI Chatbot on Twitter. Big Data and Cognitive Computing 7, 1 (2023), 35.

[27]

Alex Vadukul. 2022. ’luddite’ teens don’t want your likes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html

[28]

John Villasenor. 2023. How CHATGPT can improve education, not threaten it. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chatgpt-can-improve-education-not-threaten-it/

[29]

Filippos Vlachos and Artemis Papadimitriou. 2015. Effect of age and gender on children’s reading performance: The possible neural underpinnings. Cogent Psychology 2, 1 (2015), 1045224.

[30]

Jules White, Quchen Fu, Sam Hays, Michael Sandborn, Carlos Olea, Henry Gilbert, Ashraf Elnashar, Jesse Spencer-Smith, and Douglas C Schmidt. 2023. A prompt pattern catalog to enhance prompt engineering with chatgpt. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.11382 (2023).

[31]

Xiaoming Zhai. 2022. ChatGPT user experience: Implications for education. Available at SSRN 4312418 (2022).

Cited By

Uğraş M(2024)Evaluation of ChatGPT Usage in Preschool Education: Teacher PerspectivesEğitim Ve İnsani Bilimler Dergisi: Teori Ve Uygulama10.58689/eibd.153733715:30(387-414)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.58689/eibd.1537337
Arbulú Ballesteros MAcosta Enríquez BRamos Farroñán EGarcía Juárez HCruz Salinas LBlas Sánchez JArbulú Castillo JLicapa-Redolfo GFarfán Chilicaus G(2024)The Sustainable Integration of AI in Higher Education: Analyzing ChatGPT Acceptance Factors Through an Extended UTAUT2 Framework in Peruvian UniversitiesSustainability10.3390/su16231070716:23(10707)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/su162310707
Liu SHu YTian ZJin ZRuan SMao JSakai TIshita EOhshima HRadboud FMao JJose J(2024)Investigating Users' Search Behavior and Outcome with ChatGPT in Learning-oriented Search TasksProceedings of the 2024 Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval in the Asia Pacific Region10.1145/3673791.3698406(103-113)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673791.3698406
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Children on ChatGPT Readability in an Educational Context: Myth or Opportunity?

Recommendations

ChatGPT in education: Teachers’ and Students’ views
ECCE '24: Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2024

Since its launch just over two years ago, the conversational chatbot ChatGPT developed by OpenAI has become integrated into the studies of students within the Swedish educational system. This paper investigates both teachers’ perspectives and attitudes ...
Scaffolding the scaffolding: Supporting children's social-emotional learning at home
CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing

The development of strong social and emotional skills is central to personal wellbeing. Increasingly, these skills are being taught in schools through well researched curricula. Such social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula are most effective if ...
Enhancing ChatGPT in POE Inquiry Learning for STEM Education to Improve Critical Thinking Skills
Innovative Technologies and Learning
Abstract
The importance of integrating inquiry-based strategies into STEM activities lies in creating a challenging and engaging teaching environment that promotes active learning among students. This educational setting not only sparks students’ interest ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UMAP '23 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

June 2023

446 pages

ISBN:9781450398916

DOI:10.1145/3563359

Copyright © 2023 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 June 2023

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

UMAP '23

Sponsor:

UMAP '23: 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

June 26 - 29, 2023

Limassol, Cyprus

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 162 of 633 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

UMAP '25

Sponsor:
sigchi
sigchi

33rd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

June 16 - 19, 2025

New York City , NY , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

13
Total Citations
View Citations
1,673
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)969
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)90

Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Uğraş M(2024)Evaluation of ChatGPT Usage in Preschool Education: Teacher PerspectivesEğitim Ve İnsani Bilimler Dergisi: Teori Ve Uygulama10.58689/eibd.153733715:30(387-414)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.58689/eibd.1537337
Arbulú Ballesteros MAcosta Enríquez BRamos Farroñán EGarcía Juárez HCruz Salinas LBlas Sánchez JArbulú Castillo JLicapa-Redolfo GFarfán Chilicaus G(2024)The Sustainable Integration of AI in Higher Education: Analyzing ChatGPT Acceptance Factors Through an Extended UTAUT2 Framework in Peruvian UniversitiesSustainability10.3390/su16231070716:23(10707)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/su162310707
Liu SHu YTian ZJin ZRuan SMao JSakai TIshita EOhshima HRadboud FMao JJose J(2024)Investigating Users' Search Behavior and Outcome with ChatGPT in Learning-oriented Search TasksProceedings of the 2024 Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval in the Asia Pacific Region10.1145/3673791.3698406(103-113)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673791.3698406
Kasinidou MBoratto LGena CMarras MGermanakos PPopescus E(2024)Development of Personalised Educational Tools for AI Literacy Using Participatory DesignAdjunct Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3631700.3664917(30-34)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631700.3664917
Kruis JPera MNapel ZLandoni MMurgia EHuibers TFeskens R(2024)Toward Personalised Learning Experiences: Beyond Prompt EngineeringProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3659367(644-649)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3659367
Roegiest APinkosova Z(2024)Generative Information Systems Are Great If You Can ReadProceedings of the 2024 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3627508.3638345(165-177)Online publication date: 10-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627508.3638345
Di Paolo LWhite BGuénin-Carlut AConstant AClark A(2024)Active inference goes to school: the importance of active learning in the age of large language modelsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2023.0148379:1911Online publication date: 19-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2023.0148
Rice M(2024)The micropolitical landscape of publicly discoverable policies for generative AI in large US school districtsTechnology, Pedagogy and Education10.1080/1475939X.2024.2421494(1-17)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2024.2421494
Singh HArora MSingh A(2024)ChatGPT in marketing: innovative pathways, decision systems, and forward perspectivesJournal of Decision Systems10.1080/12460125.2024.2438615(1-28)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/12460125.2024.2438615
Hatmanto ERahmawati FPasandalan SSorohiti M(2024)Empowering Creative Education: Applying ChatGPT for Enhancing Personalized Learning in Senior Teacher-Driven Instructional Design in the PhilippinesE3S Web of Conferences10.1051/e3sconf/202459405004594(05004)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202459405004
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents