ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Digital Learning Innovations
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1674141
This article is part of the Research TopicArtificial Intelligence in Educational Technology: Innovations, Impacts, and Future DirectionsView all articles
ChatGPT and Intrinsic Motivation in Higher Education: A TAM-Based Study
Provisionally accepted
- Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Highly evolved and capable, ChatGPT is an intelligent chatbot with great implications for fostering active student learning due to its capacity to respond quickly to academic queries as well as to engage in dynamic interactions with the learner. In the present research which was conducted within the Saudi university context, we studied how intrinsic motivation and factors related to TAM (technology acceptance model) influenced undergraduate students' acceptance of ChatGPT as a tool for learning actively. The study adopted a structural equation approach to investigate the extended TAM model in tertiary education. The results of the revealed that intrinsic motivation, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use were found to be significant predictors of behavioral intention. Finally, the study highlights that AI-based tools as user-friendly, beneficial, engaging and intriguing promote students' active learning and enhance their involvement in the learning process and, thus, their acquisition of new knowledge.
Keywords: AI, ChatGPT, teaching acceptance model (TAM), Motivation, Active Learning
Received: 27 Jul 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Afzaal, Younas and El-Dakhs. 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: Muhammad Younas, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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