ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1574477
One Year in the Classroom with ChatGPT: Empirical Insights and Transformative Impacts
Provisionally accepted
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, United States
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Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, has rapidly emerged as a transformative tool in higher education, offering opportunities to enhance teaching and learning. This paper describes the design and implementation of ChatGPT-integrated curriculum activities, featuring coding learning in psychology and conceptual discussions in physics, and presents the findings of a year-long experimental study in both types of classrooms. Our findings suggest that students generally found ChatGPT easy to use and beneficial to their learning, reporting improved confidence, motivation, and engagement. However, its ability to address individual needs or replace instructors was viewed less favorably. Comparative analyses showed that coding activities in psychology led to higher levels of activity satisfaction and perceived usefulness of ChatGPT compared to the more abstract discussion activities in physics. While graduate students were more enthusiastic about using ChatGPT for skill acquisition than undergraduates, demographic factors such as gender, race, and first-generation college status showed no significant influence on such perceptions. Meanwhile, instructors' reflections emphasize the importance of thoughtful integration, technical support, and pedagogical balance to maximize GAI's potential while mitigating its limitations. Recommendations for integrating GAI into teaching practices and future research directions are discussed, contributing to the evolving discourse on GAI's role in transforming modern classrooms.
Keywords: Generative artificial intelligence, AI, ChatGPT, Teaching, Education
Received: 20 Feb 2025; Accepted: 02 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guo, Li and Cunningham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Feng Guo, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, United States
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