Tlili et al.

Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Smart Learning Environments

[Link]

RESEARCH Open Access

What if the devil is my guardian angel:

ChatGPT as a case study of using chatbots
in education
Ahmed Tlili1 , Boulus Shehata1 , Michael Agyemang Adarkwah1* , Aras Bozkurt2 , Daniel T. Hickey3 ,
Ronghuai Huang1   and Brighter Agyemang4   

*Correspondence:
adarkwahmichael1@[Link] Abstract
1
Smart Learning Institute Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have been progressing constantly and being
of Beijing Normal University, more visible in different aspects of our lives. One recent phenomenon is ChatGPT, a
Beijing, China
2
Open Education Faculty,
chatbot with a conversational artificial intelligence interface that was developed by
Distance Education Department, OpenAI. As one of the most advanced artificial intelligence applications, ChatGPT has
Anadolu University, Eskisehir, drawn much public attention across the globe. In this regard, this study examines
Turkey
3
Indiana University Learning
ChatGPT in education, among early adopters, through a qualitative instrumental case
Sciences Program, Bloomington, study. Conducted in three stages, the first stage of the study reveals that the public
IN, USA
4
discourse in social media is generally positive and there is enthusiasm regarding its use
University of Wollongong, New
South Wales, Australia
in educational settings. However, there are also voices who are approaching cautiously
using ChatGPT in educational settings. The second stage of the study examines the
case of ChatGPT through lenses of educational transformation, response quality, useful-
ness, personality and emotion, and ethics. In the third and final stage of the study, the
investigation of user experiences through ten educational scenarios revealed various
issues, including cheating, honesty and truthfulness of ChatGPT, privacy misleading,
and manipulation. The findings of this study provide several research directions that
should be considered to ensure a safe and responsible adoption of chatbots, specifi-
cally ChatGPT, in education.
Keywords: Generative AI, ChatGPT, Chatbots, Education, Artificial intelligence,
Human–machine collaboration

Introduction
Can machines think? is a simple, yet a sophisticated question (Turing, 1950). In an effort
to find an answer to this question, McCarthy et al. (1955) organized a scholarly event
and coined the term "artificial intelligence” (AI) in 1955 to refer to machines and pro-
cesses that imitate human cognition and make decisions like humans. At these times,
the term [ro]bots are articulated for the first time in Čapek’s (1921) science fiction play;
however, it was Asimov (1942, 1950) who visioned that these machines can transform
into intelligent forms and introduced the Three Laws of Robotics to set the rules that
bots should stick to and cannot be bypassed. Originally known as the imitation game,

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 2 of 24

the Turing Test was proposed as a code of protocol to understand whether a machine
can exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human
(Turing, 1950). Once depicted as fiction, all those possibilities are about to come true,
and we are at the brink of a future when we can know whether machines can think or
not.
In November 2022, OpenAI, a lab that studies artificial intelligence, came out with a
chatbot called ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). ChatGPT is a conversa-
tional artificial intelligence interface that uses natural language processing (NLP), which
interacts in a realistic way and even “answers follow-up questions, admits its mistakes,
challenges incorrect premises, and rejects inappropriate requests’’ (OpenAI, 2023).
While ChatGPT’s primary function was to mimic human conversation, its capabilities
extend far beyond that; it can literally create new things, such as a poem, story, or novel,
or act like anything within its capability.
With the advent of ChatGPT, there is eventually an innovative AI technology that will
truly challenge the Turing Test (Turing, 1950) and demonstrate if it is capable of think-
ing like humans. It is uncertain if it would pass the Turing Test (Turing, 1950) in the long
run, but it is sure that ChatGPT is revolutionary as a conversational AI-powered bot,
and it is a visible signal for the paradigm shift that has been happening not only in the
educational landscape, but also in every dimension of our lives. Compared to traditional
chatbots, ChatGPT is based on GPT-3, which is the third iteration of the GPT series
by OpenAI that is more advanced in terms of scale (175 billion parameters, compared
to 1.5 billion of GPT-2), larger dataset as the training data, more fine-tuning, enhanced
capabilities, and more human-like text generations (Brown et al., 2020). The use of Natu-
ral Language Processing and a generative AI that relies on deep learning has enabled
ChatGPT to produce human-like text and maintain a conversational style allowing more
realistic natural dialogues.
Several preprints of studies and numerous blog posts and media outlets have reported
the advantages of ChatGPT in education (Zhai, 2022); some have even provided guide-
lines on using it in classrooms (Lieberman, 2023; Mollick & Mollick, 2022; Ofgang,
2022). However, the potential concerns of chatbots haven’t been investigated as much.
Janssen et al. (2021) described reasons for chatbots’ failure in practice, including not hav-
ing enough resources, wrong use case (i.e., the basic chatbot technology did not match
the required task), poor law regulations, data security, and liability concerns, ignorance
of user expectation and bad conversation design, or simply poor content. Haque et al.
(2022) did a Twitter sentiment analysis about ChatGPT adoption as a technology in
general (not in education), and they found that users have divided attitudes about it.
However, concerns coming from an advanced chatbot, such as ChatGPT, were not well
investigated in the education field. Therefore, it is not clear if ChatGPT will overcome
the concerns found in previous chatbots or will even deepen them. Consequently, this
may lead to a serious and quick protective reaction to a potential opportunity, such as
New York City and Los Angeles Unified schools’ banning of ChatGPT from educational
networks due to the risk of using it to cheat in assignments (Shen-Berro, 2023; The
Guardian, 2023). It is therefore important to investigate the concerns of using this tech-
nology, ChatGPT, in education to ensure safe use. The purpose of this study is, therefore,
to examine chatbots in education and for this purpose, the study approaches ChatGPT

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 3 of 24

as a representative case of an advanced chatbot among early adopters. In this regard, this
study answers the following research question: What are the concerns of using chatbots,
specifically ChatGPT, in education?

Methodology
To answer the aforementioned research question, this study adopts a qualitative case
study approach (Yin, 1984) and benefits from an instrumental case study research design
(Stake, 1995). Instrumental research design is helpful when researchers intend to under-
stand a phenomenon in a context (Stake, 1995), which is in our case, ChatGPT which is
a fine and recent example of AI-powered chatbots. To ensure the validity and reliabil-
ity of the study, the research triangulates (Thurmond, 2001) the data collection tools to
get a broader and deeper understanding. In this regard, this study follows three stages,
namely, social network analysis of tweets, content analysis of interviews, and investiga-
tion of user experiences. Each of the stages is described in the next subsequent sections.

Social network analysis of tweets

Tweet analysis aims to understand the public discourse on the use of ChatGPT in edu-
cation. Specifically, a cross-sectional analysis of tweets was conducted through Social
Network Analysis (SNA) (Hansen et al., 2010). Specifically, from December 23, 2022, to
January 6, 2023, 2330 tweets, from 1530 Twitter users, were collected and analyzed con-
taining the following search string: “#ChatGPT* AND (education OR teaching OR learn-
ing)”. The dataset was compiled through social network analysis (Hansen et al., 2010)
and the content of the tweets was further examined through sentiment analysis (Giacha-
nou & Crestani, 2016) and tSNE analysis (van der Maaten & Hinton, 2008).

Content analysis of interviews

Interview analysis was conducted to investigate how different stakeholders (students,
educators, etc.) perceive the use of ChatGPT in education, especially the concerns they
have about it. Specifically, 19 interviewees, who have been using ChatGPT in education
and posting their experiences through blogs publicly, were recruited from their chan-
nels. The interviewer had a long experience of using chatbots in education, and specifi-
cally had been using ChatGPT for at least one month. For the interviewees, despite that
they were carefully chosen for this study to ensure the reliability of the findings, we fur-
ther asked them to rate their familiarity with Chatbots, on a scale from 1 to 5 (where 1 is
not familiar and 5 is very familiar). The interviews had an average of 3.02 related to the
familiarity with chatbots, which reflect their appropriateness for this study. The inter-
viewees were selected with various working backgrounds, such as educators, developers,
students, and AI freelancers, to ensure the solicitation of rich answers from each one’s
perspective. To analyse the collected interviews, content analysis, which is one of the
classical procedures for analysing textual materials, was used (Flick, 2009). The analysis
was based on the steps proposed by Erlingsson and Brysiewicz (2017). Particularly, two
coders read the given interview results before they start coding them based on the devel-
oped coding scheme in Table 1.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 4 of 24

Table 1 Definition of codes

Code Definition

Educational transformation Use this code when users are talking about how ChatGPT will change education
Response quality Use this code when users are talking about the accuracy of the obtained results
from ChatGPT
Usefulness Use this code when users are talking about how ChatGPT helped them in educa-
tion
Personality and emotion Use this code when users are talking about their feelings when interacting with
ChatGPT or if mentioning the emotions revealed by ChatGPT
Ethics Use this code when users are talking about the ethical concerns of using ChatGPT
in education

Investigation of user experiences

User experience aims to conduct hands-on experiences of using ChatGPT and iden-
tify potential concerns that might be faced when using it in education. User experience
involves human perceptions and responses that result from the use of a product, sys-
tem, or service. User Experience points to a more global projective goal: not just attain
effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction, but it aims to enhance the entire experience of
the user, from the expectation, through interaction and finally the reflection about the
experience (Beccari & Oliveira, 2011). In this context, three experienced educators have
used ChatGPT for a whole week to test similar and different teaching/learning scenar-
ios, and then see the obtained results accordingly. In this context, daily meetings during
the whole week were conducted between these educators to discuss and summarize the
obtained results.

Results
The obtained results were structured according to each stage as discussed in the follow-
ing subsequent sections.

Social network analysis of tweets

The overall aim of social network analysis is to learn more about public discourse regard-
ing the use of ChatGPT from the perspective of educational purposes. Figure 1 shows
tweets analysis using the Harel-Koren Fast Multiscale algorithm, which is a fast multi-
level graph layout that provides better visualizations (Harel & Koren, 2001). Specifically,
the edge colors, opacities, and widths are based on edge weight values. The node sizes
are based on betweenness centrality values. Each interaction (e.g., retweets, mentions,
likes) is identified as a relation and visualized as an edge. While some of the sub-clusters
demonstrate that some participants gathered around some ideas, the overall network is
composed of isolated nodes (e.g., see the largest cluster on the upper left side of Fig. 1).
Accordingly, Fig. 1 shows a fragmented brand cluster pattern (Rainie, 2014; Smith et al.,
2014) implying that the community formation about ChatGPT is fragmented, and indi-
viduals are seeking more information and discussion about its limitations and promises
by tethering some influencer nodes in the ChatGPT network.
The most used word pairs also provide interesting insights. For instance, some sug-
gest how to use AI-powered ChatGPT (e.g., education—chatgpt, education—learn-
ing, focused—grading, etc.), and some others hint that educational systems are in a

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 5 of 24

Fig. 1 Bird-view of the ChatGPT network

Table 2 Sentiment analysis of the tweets

Category Frequency Salience Percentage (%)

Positive sentiments 1684 0.032 5

Negative sentiments 847 0.016 2.5
Non-categorized sentiments 31,255 0.599 92.5

turning point (e.g., existential—crisis, kind—ironic, crisis—happening, forgotten—

purpose, etc.). The general public’s view on the use of chatbots, more specifically
ChatGPT, is diverse and there is no collective consensus on whether it is a hype or a
future opportunity. However, the sentiment analysis of tweets (Giachanou & Crestani,
2016), demonstrates that the positive sentiments (5%) outweigh the negative senti-
ments (2.5%) (see Table 2). The fact that non-categorized sentiments (92.5%) are in
the majority can be considered as an indicator that most people are undecided about
ChatGPT in education.
The positive and negative sentiments are clearly reflected in some tweets with high
edge weight values (Hansen et al., 2010). An example of positive sentiments is:

• As a language model trained by OpenAI, I’m constantly amazed by the power &
potential of artificial intelligence. From natural language processing to machine
learning, AI is revolutionizing the way we think about & interact with technology.
#AI #machinelearning #openai #ChatGPT

An example of negative sentiments is:

• Here’s my problem with this line of thinking about #ChatGPT as a writing instruc-
tor. Reactionary teaching goes nowhere.

An example of non-categorized sentiment is:

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 6 of 24

• “Teachers are talking about ChatGPT as either a dangerous medicine with amazing
side effects or an amazing medicine with dangerous side effects.” —@VicariousLee.
Stanford faculty weigh in on #ChatGPT’s shake-up in education [Link]
bzeWm #edtech #edchat #gpt3 #ai [Link]

The word cluster of the most frequent 100 terms from the tweets (see Fig. 2), using
tSNE analysis was applied. t-SNE is an unsupervised “nonlinear dimensionality reduc-
tion technique that aims to preserve the local structure of data” (van der Maaten &
Hinton, 2008, p. 2580), used for exploring and visualizing high dimensional data. The
findings revealed that most of the users are optimistic about the use of AI-powered chat-
bots, such as ChatGPT in the educational systems. While the blue cluster in Fig. 2 dem-
onstrates the future promises of using ChatGPT (e.g., see the terms: ChatGPT, learning,
AI, education, future, teaching, learn), the pink cluster indicates insights regarding how
to use it and its revolutionary potential (e.g., see the terms: gpt, 2023, artificial, intelli-
gence, human, think, and better, way, knowledge, technology, tools, student, teacher), the
green cluster shows critical insights (e.g., see the terms: cheating, change, ideas, create,
problem, potential, ways, edtech).
The most frequently used relevant hashtags are #chatgpt #AI, #ArtificialIntelligence
#education, #machinelearning, #deeplearning #edtech #openAI, and #python, which
implies that there is a need to carefully examine the AI technologies (e.g., machine
learning, deep learning) lying behind the ChatGPT. As seen in the sample tweets (see
Table 3), despite that there is an optimistic overview of using ChatGPT in education,
there are also some concerns regarding the use of such technologies in the educational
landscape.
To summarize, the findings from the Social Network Analysis of tweets revealed that
positive sentiments have shown almost as twice higher frequency than negative ones
(see Table 2). However, the example tweets show that negative sentiments demonstrate
deeper and critical thinking than the positive ones (see Table 3). This could be explained
by the fact that most of the positive sentiments are led by the novelty effect of Chat-
GPT as a technology in education. On the other hand, the negative sentiments represent

Fig. 2 Word cluster of tweets through tSNE analysis

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 7 of 24

Table 3 Sample Tweets about the concerns of using ChatGPT in Education

As we develop our understanding and approaches to #AI #ChatGPT integration in #education, we should incor-
porate these key aspects: Critical Thinking, Ethical Considerations, Methods (language model used/data sources)
& Prompt Skill Development
As an educator who loves teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum, I think all of these responses miss the mark. The
technology behind #ChatGPT will systematically change education. But will not fundamentally evolve the way
humans learn
My initial propositions: Let us change assessment practices to respond to the tech. Let us keep teaching our
modern students a knowledge-rich curriculum. Let us proactively teach students how to harness the power of
#ChatGPT which is scratching the surface of the potential of AI
I get the concern… but the response is like burying heads in the sand. AI tools like this will be part of the world
these children live in. They need to be taught how to use this—appropriately, ethically, safely & responsibly. #AI
#Education #ChatGPT
Whether we like it or not, AI in education is here. I asked #OpenAI #ChatGPT to help me with the early planning
stages for an upper elementary 3D Design after-school club. In under a minute, I had a solid foundation to build
upon. The tech is here, embrace it
Not all of these will be massively helpful, but what #ChatGPT has done for education is made it significantly
easier to create resources and activities in as little as 1 min. I will continue to play around for it, and look forward
to when it can create graphs! /end
It’s wild to think about how we’ve trained machines and now they’re teaching us! #MachineLearning #AI #Chat-
GPT
AI technology may be rapidly advancing, but so is AI regulation. While a variety of state-based AI-related
bills have been passed in the U.S and also to mention the EU AI Act and UK and Singapore AI and Machine Learn-
ing regulations. more AI regulations to come. #ChatGPT #AI
So with all the focus around AI text generators like #chatGPT on student "cheating", do educators see this as
cheating too? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, surely?
The existential crisis happening in education because of #ChatGPT is kind of ironic to me. School systems around
the world are so focused on grading and busy work that they’ve forgotten the purpose of education: learning

more critical concerns, hence a deeper and thorough thinking of why ChatGPT should
be approached with caution.

Content analysis of interviews

The content analysis of interviews revealed that the users found ChatGPT very signifi-
cant with a great value to revolutionize education, however, they raised several con-
cerns at the same time. Their views are structured according to the five themes shown in
Table 1.

Educational transformation
Responses from a majority of the participants suggest that ChatGPT is efficacious in
increasing the chances of educational success by affording users (teachers and students)
baseline knowledge of various topics. Additionally, ChatGPT was recognized by the par-
ticipants as efficient in providing a comprehensive understanding of varied (complex)
topics in an easy-to-understand language. In this light, it can be argued that ChatGPT
will lead to a paradigm shift in conventional approaches to instruction delivery and drive
learning reform in the future pregnant with digital potential. For instance, one partici-
pant reported:

“I would use ChatGPT for two purposes: as a learning aid and in instructional
design within the field of education. For students, ChatGPT can provide learners
with model answers that can stimulate their understanding of various subject mat-
ters. Additionally, in terms of instructional design, ChatGPT can be a useful tool

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 8 of 24

for teachers and educators to remind them of what knowledge and skills should
be included in their curriculum, by providing an outline” (Assistant Professor of
Instructional Technology, USA, familiarity is: 2).

Conversely, a few of the participants held an opposing view that the abuse of Chat-
GPT by learners can also diminish their innovative capacities and critical thinking. For
instance, when learners are not motivated, the probability of seeking an easy-to-get solu-
tion is high as can be deducted from a statement from one participant.

“Sometimes when I have no inspiration for writing a thesis, I will choose to use this
software to input the answers to the questions I want to know” (Student of Educa-
tion, China, familiarity is: 4).

Response quality
Response quality is vital to the success and effective adoption of Chatbots for school
operations. In this study, most of the participants evaluated the dialogue quality and
the degree of accurate information ChatGPT provides as satisfactory. However, it was
added that the conversational agent is prone to occasional errors and limited informa-
tion (presently, as reported by OpenAI, the data ChatGPT provides is limited to 2021).
That is, at most times, responses from ChatGPT were reasonable and reliable but were
at times accompanied by misleading information. This indicates that the output quality
of ChatGPT though acceptable needs to be enhanced. An example given by one partici-
pant (a programmer) is the generation of a wrong code that did not work properly when
entered into a programming software. Nonetheless, the fewer errors of ChatGPT were
praised by some participants as an efficient virtual assistant in constructing knowledge
and products. For instance, one participant stated:

“The answers from ChatGPT can be somewhat accurate but not totally. For exam-
ple, when I couldn’t figure out how to write codes for a specific problem, the answers
are vague and cannot totally solve my problem. I need to figure it out by myself using
the experience I had” (Student of Geography, China, familiarity is: 2).

A participant further elaborated that the quality of answers getting from ChatGPT
depends on the quality of questions asked by the user saying:

“It depends on the type of questions that you ask. If it is too recent, then the answers
won’t be too good, because ChatGPT lacks context, if you do not provide it with
questions that are specific enough then its answers wouldn’t be too good” (Developer,
USA, familiarity is: 3).

Personality and emotions

A large body of the participants was impressed by the fluidity of their conversation with
ChatGPT. The interactions with ChatGPT were deemed exciting and fun. Notwithstand-
ing, it was acknowledged that it is yet to achieve full humanization because it is cur-
rently limited to a textual interface and cannot detect physical cues or motions of a user.
Most participants felt the humaneness of ChatGPT needs to be improved, especially in
terms of enhancing its social role, as one of the participants reported:

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 9 of 24

“I don’t think it can be compared to a real human being, and what it offers is not
comparable to what a real person would say through genuine empathy. And in dia-
logue, it would say "As an AI, I don’t have the ability to love or feel emotions as
humans do, but I am here to assist you with any question or task you have.” (Student
of Nursing Research, UK, familiarity is: 3).

She further elaborated:

“Occasionally, however, when it comes to emotions, it can be a little disappointing to

find that it does not provide me with emotional value” (Student of Nursing Research,
UK, familiarity is: 3).”

Another participant revealed her emotional attachment to ChatGPT because it was

like her personal tutor answering all her questions and helping her to learn. However,
she then felt disappointed and not safe when she discovered that not all the information
it gives is accurate. She reported:

"…the first time I used it I freaked out because it is too human, the way it talks feels
like my personal tutor, after it answered a lot of my elementary questions “patiently”
I feel grateful to it, just as how I would feel if my tutor does this for me, and it makes
me creepy because I sensed that I am having an emotional attachment to it. And
another impressive experience was when I found out that it provided wrong article
information I feel frustrated, because I trusted it in my study and if it can make
something logical from nonsense, then I don’t feel safe to trust it anymore, it is kind
like lost a good teacher whom I can depend on." (Student of Education, China,
familiarity is: 4).

Usefulness
The specificity and relevant information provided by ChatGPT on diverse disciplines
(e.g. science, history, business, health, technology, etc.) or topics made many of the users
in the study perceive it as useful. A participant also mentioned that it has the capability
to lessen the instructional workload of teachers and provide students with immediate
feedback. Despite the perceived usefulness of ChatGPT, some users encountered chal-
lenges with the accuracy of responses, the provision of alternative answers or responses
which at times contradict previous answers provided on the same topic, and its limited
ability to provide certain contextual information, as one participant stated:

“ChatGPT has limited knowledge bases for searching academic resources in certain
contexts. For example, finding lists of famous researchers in specific academic fields
appears limited. …If a user needs in-depth and contextual information, ChatGPT’s
functionality is limited” (Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, USA,
familiarity is: 2).

Another participant pointed out the need for more functionalities, such as the possi-
bility of making annotations to make ChatGPT more useful:

“It lacks functions like editing, making a note or searching for certain information
in the previous conversation, but I consider these functions are pretty convenient for

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 10 of 24

research purposes” (Student of Education, China, familiarity is: 4).

Ethics
Some of the enumerated ethical concerns raised by participants in the study cover
encouraging plagiarism and cheating, the tendency to breed laziness among users (par-
ticularly in students), and being prone to errors such as the provision of bias or fake
information. Additionally, some participants pinpointed the random inaccuracies and
vagueness of ChatGPT on topics of relevance based on experience. This made some par-
ticipants at times doubt the trustworthiness of the information provided. They expressed
the output data of ChatGPT seem more like an opinion without references. Another eth-
ical challenge for users in this study was the ChatGPT’s likelihood of reducing students’
critical thinking. For instance, one participant stated:

“A major concern of ChatGPT is the creation of fake and plausible information gen-
erated by computers rather than human decision-making. There are ethical con-
cerns about students relying too heavily on answers without being aware of their
veracity. Guidelines to promote critical thinking when using ChatGPT in future
research would be necessary” (Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, USA
familiarity is: 2).

Some participants were also concerned about exposing their private and demographic
information to ChatGPT through repetitive interactions. For instance, a participant
stated:

“There is a data security risk, which is included in the interaction with ChatGPT,
which may expose personal privacy (age, gender, address, contact information, hob-
bies, even capital account and other personal privacy). Much of this personal infor-
mation is exposed in the user’s unconscious communication process. Whether the
legality of data acquisition and data processing methods are limited by relevant
laws and regulation” (Developer, USA, familiarity is: 3).

Investigation of user experiences

After daily meetings between the three educators to compare the various results that
they have been using with ChatGPT, 10 scenarios where various educational concerns
were identified. Each scenario is explained below.

Scenario 1‑Cheating and getting away with it

ChatGPT has proven that it can help students write essays and answer short-answer and
multiple-choice exam questions, hence facilitating cheating. However, the most critical
issue to pay attention to is that students can even get away with playing the system. For
instance, Fig. 3a shows that when a paragraph was copied as it is from the ChatGPT to
GPT-2, an output detector model (the latest developed detector by OpenAI) for exam-
ining the likelihood of this paragraph being written by a human or an AI, the test result
shows that the paragraph is fake (i.e., it was written by an AI). However, when one word
was added, namely “amazing”, the fake level was reduced to 24% (see Fig. 3b). While this
is only one example, it still raises concerns about the effective ways of detecting cheating

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 11 of 24

Fig. 3 Similarity assessment of the essays generated by ChatGPT

in education using chatbots. Therefore, someone might ask how to effectively detect and
prevent cheating using ChatGPT in education.

Scenario 2‑Accuracy of the provided learning content

As chatbots are good at generating learning content, it is always important to keep in
mind the accuracy of this content. For instance, Fig. 4 shows that when an educator
asked about a comparative summary of some chatbot studies, the accuracy of the con-
tent provided by ChatGPT was not very accurate, where the advantages and disadvan-
tages of the presented chatbots in both studies are the same, despite that the authors of
this present study reviewed both papers and found different results. The summary of
both papers was also too generic and ChatGPT used similar content for both papers like
“including the benefits and challenges of using chatbots in education.” Therefore, some-
one might ask how to ensure the quality and accuracy of the provided content, and how
someone can check the reliability of the provided content generated by chatbots gener-
ally, or ChatGPT specifically.

Scenario 3‑Fairness of the provided learning content

ChatGPT learns from prior interactions with users. Therefore, the three educators initi-
ated a new conversation with ChatGPT to ensure that no prior history was established
which might affect the prompt results. They were also on the same university network
(i.e., the same location). Despite this, the three educators asked the exact same question:
“could you compare 10 chatbot models used in education, against their developer, year
they started, target audience, advantages, disadvantages, and future prospects,” and sur-
prisingly got different answers; Educator 1 got very recent answers which are organized
from 2021 and backwards (see Fig. 5a), while Educator 2 and Educator 3 got different
answers (see Fig. 5b, c), which are not up-to-date just like Educator 1. Additionally, it is
seen that Educators 2 and 3 got a different structure for their answers, and, unlike Educa-
tor 1, they only got 7 models instead of 10. Furthermore, Educator 1 got a very organized

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 12 of 24

Fig. 4 Generated learning content by ChatGPT

answer which is a well-structured table that could be easily read and remembered (see
Fig. 5a), while it was not the case for Educator 2 or 3 (see Fig. 5b, c). Therefore, someone
might ask how to ensure fair access/treatment by all users (teachers, students, etc.) to
the same updated and high-quality learning content.

Scenario 4‑Appropriateness and naivety of the created learning assessments

While ChatGPT is a smart tool for creating quizzes, the generated quizzes are different
in difficulty level. Particularly, Fig. 6 shows that some of the created quiz answers are too
naïve (e.g., Pizza oven, first question), where the wrong answer can easily be identified
without any background needed. Additionally, the wrong answer was always placed at
the end (answer D). Therefore, someone might ask about the appropriateness of the cre-
ated learning quizzes using ChatGPT.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 13 of 24

Fig. 5 The three different answers to the exact same prompt by the three educators

Fig. 6 The educational technology quiz generated by ChatGPT

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 14 of 24

Scenario 5‑Structure design of learning assessments

A well-designed and structured learning assessment is crucial for students to easily
understand and solve. When using ChatGPT for designing potential learning assess-
ment quizzes that could support educators in preparing their teaching materials, it is
seen that there is inconsistency in the designed learning assessment, which can make
teachers’ duties more complicated rather than easy. In Fig. 7, for instance, the answers
to the quiz were put in one line, which is not the case in Fig. 6, where the answers
were put in separate lines, in a more comprehensive way. Additionally, the correct
answer to each question was given in Fig. 7, but this was not the case in Fig. 6. There-
fore, someone might wonder how to get the best out of chatbots (ChatGPT) in terms
of learning content and structure design of learning assessments.

Fig. 7 A learning test generated by ChatGPT

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 15 of 24

Scenario 6‑Unlocking the full potential of learning assistance

Users (learners, educators, etc.) can unleash different learning assistance levels based
on their interaction ways and styles with ChatGPT. For instance, Fig. 8 shows that
despite that Educator 1 made several spelling mistakes, ChatGPT did not care about
these mistakes and proceeded to answer the question. It even claimed that it cannot
correct spelling mistakes (see Fig. 8a). On the other hand, when Educator 2 asked
about the same topic and, in the beginning, pointed out that his English level is poor
and he needs ChatGPT to correct his spelling mistakes too, the results were surpris-
ingly different from Educator 1, where ChatGPT corrected the spelling mistakes of
Educator 2 (see Fig. 8b). Therefore, someone might ask if this new technology (Chat-
GPT) requires acquiring new competencies and thinking styles to fully unleash its
powerfulness in education. Besides, that example also implies that it is not all about
asking a question or requiring something, but it is about asking the right question or
requiring precisely to get proper ChatGPT outputs.

Scenario 7‑Absence of emotions or reflections on students’ engagements

It is very common for educators to ask their students about writing their reflections
on the learning experience at the end of a course, as this can help them to critically
think not only about how to further support their students based on their feedback,
but also adjusting/enhancing their teaching practices accordingly. However, through
the use of ChatGPT, it is almost impossible to get engagement reflection as ChatGPT
clearly states that it is a machine and not a human (see Fig. 9). The interaction with
ChatGPT showed that it cannot reveal any emotions (see Fig. 9). This was also high-
lighted in interview responses as pointed out earlier. Therefore, someone might think
about how to make chatbots more humanized not only in terms of thinking and giv-
ing answers, but also in terms of revealing emotions and having a personality.

Fig. 8 The responses of ChatGPT to the conversation scenarios of correcting spelling mistakes

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 16 of 24

Fig. 9 Emotion statement revealed by ChatGPT

Fig. 10 Example of excuses given by ChatGPT

Scenario 8‑Honesty and truthfulness of ChatGPT

While asking different types of questions, ChatGPT sometimes did not give complete
answers, and always come up with unmeaningful reasons, such as oversights or for-
mat problems, explaining why it did this (see Fig. 10). Therefore, someone might ask if
this behavior might negatively impact the users’ behaviors, for instance, young learners
might be affected by this behavior and also start giving excuses to their teachers about
not doing a certain task or assignment.

Scenario 9‑Privacy misleading

Like all technologies, users’ privacy when using ChatGPT is a concern. When check-
ing the official OpenAI website on ChatGPT FAQ ([Link]
les/​67834​57-​chatg​pt-​faq) related to this issue, it is seen that conversations are stored,
reviewed, and used to improve the system. While it is not very clear how all these con-
versations are stored and used (Blackbox), surprisingly when ChatGPT also asked about
this matter, it denied it (see Fig. 11), claiming that it does not store any conversation
data. This misleading is very critical, especially for users (learners, educators) who lack
sufficient knowledge about technology and privacy, for instance, young learners might
reveal their personal information when communicating with ChatGPT. Therefore,
someone might ask about how to ensure the privacy of different users when using Chat-
GPT in education, especially those at a young age who might find ChatGPT fun and feel
comfortable enough to share everything with it.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 17 of 24

Fig. 11 ChatGPT’s answers about storing the conversations of its users

Fig. 12 ChatGPT’s answers about APA citations of blogs

Scenario 10‑Manipulation and overpassing what was requested

When the educator (see Fig. 12a) asked ChatGPT to give him the APA format for a blog
which is about New York city banning the use of ChatGPT, ChatGPT helped with the
citation. But it then stated that the provided article does not exist, which (1) no one
asked for this information in the first place; and, (2) the information is not accurate as
the article exists and can be accessed online. To further investigate if this problem was
due to the fact that ChatGPT was trained with dataset up to 2021, another blog (not
about ChatGPT being banned) in 2023 was provided, and surprisingly ChatGPT gave
the APA format without saying anything (see Fig. 12b). Therefore, someone might ask
how to ensure that ChatGPT will not manipulate users and harm them instead of help-
ing them due to their biased algorithms, data, etc.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 18 of 24

Discussion
This study conducted a user experience supported by qualitative and sentiment analysis
to reveal the perception of users on ChatGPT in education. It specifically focused on
the concerns that different stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, educators, learners) should
keep in mind when using ChatGPT as a technology in education. The results revealed
that ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize education in different ways. This was
also reported in several studies (Firat, 2023; Susnjak, 2022; Zhai, 2022). However, several
concerns about using ChatGPT in education (the focus of this present study) were iden-
tified and discussed from different perspectives as follows:

Embrace the technology rather than banning it

Due to the increasing concerns about using ChatGPT for cheating in school homework
and assignments, New York City decided to ban it in its schools (The Guardian, 2023).
Our user experience further showed that students not only can cheat, but they can also
manipulate the system and get away with it (see scenario 1). While this decision can be
understood, ChatGPT, on the other hand, can revolutionize education by bringing a lot
of advantages that could help, for instance, teachers and students in their teaching and
learning practices, such as preparing teaching materials, creating quizzes, etc. (Herft,
2023). Therefore, just like any other technology, ChatGPT comes with both good and
bad sides, which requires more analysis and discussion on how to adopt it in schools and
universities rather than simply banning it. In a reply to a prompt asking to write a short
introduction about chatbots being both an educational guardian angel and a devil and to
express this with a sense of humor (see Fig. 13), ChatGPT said “Chatbots are here to stay,
for better or for worse!” This is very true as banning something does not mean that users
will not have their own ways to access it. In this context, recent studies on ChatGPT also
support our argument that although there are negative sides to adopting ChatGPT, it
also presents educational opportunities which can be leveraged, for instance, to improve
instruction delivery and learning (Kasneci et al., 2023; King & chatGPT, 2023). There-
fore, further discussions with experts from various domains, such as education, security,
and psychology, should be established to catalyze the understanding and good use of

Fig. 13 ChatGPT’s answer about writing an introduction about chatbots

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 19 of 24

chatbots as technology generally, and ChatGPT specifically. Consequently, more guide-

lines and policies should be established to facilitate the adoption of ChatGPT in schools
and universities. In this context, future research directions could further investigate the
potential consequences of relying too heavily on chatbots for education.

Need for new teaching philosophy

Technology is obviously transforming education, and, therefore, educators should be
upskilling their competencies and practices to meet the new demands of technology.
ChatGPT, as a technology, proved that in the long run, writing essays will not be some-
thing difficult for students even for those without previous background on a given topic.
Therefore, teachers are required to think about new teaching philosophies, which could
rely on to assess their students. For instance, it is possible to use oral debate as the old
stoics and Greeks did (Inwood, 2003), to assess their students’ logical and critical think-
ing, rationale and accuracy of arguments, and power of convincing. In the same vein,
one of the interviewees stated “In addition to ChatGPT, various apps using generative
AI can foster new ways of thinking when processing knowledge… teachers’ role in learn-
ing environments with conversational AI may aim to foster students’ scheme construction
from information pieces and build up their critical thinking that correctly evaluates the
quality of the information from the AI… since we have already noticed the emergence of
teachers’ manuals towards ChatGPT recently, there will be an increasing need to reform
existing lecture-based classroom settings” (Developer, USA, familiarity is: 3). King and
chatGPT (2023) further mentioned that with the introduction of ChatGPT, the design
of teaching should go beyond traditional methods to incorporate a variety of assessment
methods, such as group projects, hands-on activities, and oral presentations. The fast
pace of AI innovations, such as ChatGPT, demands rethinking and reimagining teach-
ing philosophies. Therefore, future research should investigate how to balance the use
of chatbots with the need for human interaction and feedback in education for better
learning/teaching experiences and outcomes.
Additionally, Schmid et al. (2009) highlighted the importance of going beyond “yes-or-
no” questions to deeply investigate the degree to which a given technology can enhance
learning outcomes and how it can be used and combined with the main instructional
approaches. It is therefore important to investigate the different human–machine collab-
oration strategies so that chatbots, particularly ChatGPT, could empower teachers and
make the teaching process more engaging, hence achieving better learning outcomes. It
is also important to investigate how “collaborative intelligence” could be achieved (i.e.,
design strategies, required competencies, etc.) to ensure that human intelligence could
be combined with machine intelligence to effectively work together and share tasks to
achieve the needed learning objective. For instance, it is possible to investigate how
ChatGPT in collaboration with the human tutor could facilitate students’ self-directed
learning online.

Nothing should be taken for granted

The user experiences (see scenario 2 or scenario 4) showed that the quality of responses
given by ChatGPT might not always be accurate or specific to the asked question, it
is, therefore, important for users to not always take everything for granted. One of the

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 20 of 24

interviewees also states “… the accuracy of refining the essence of concepts is relatively
high. For the differences between concepts, ChatGPT can refine to a certain extent, and
provide answers from some framework perspective, but it cannot compare the deep dif-
ferences between the two concepts” (Consultant, China, familiarity is: 2). What is more
worrying is that the same exact prompt used by different users might lead to different
answers with different qualities (see scenario 3). This raises concerns about fair access to
the same educational material despite using the same prompt. For instance, Kung et al.
(2023) found the accuracy of ChatGPT to be around 60%, demanding careful assessment
of its output before use. Therefore, more research should be focused on ensuring fair-
ness, accuracy, and equity among students using chatbots generally and ChatGPT par-
ticularly, which might be achieved through, for instance, having transparent and open
algorithms (Bulathwela et al., 2020). In this context, future research directions could
focus on investigating how to ensure that chatbots are able to cater to the diverse needs
and backgrounds of students, especially those with disabilities or how can we address
issues of fairness and equity in the use of chatbots, particularly for disadvantaged or
marginalized students?

Upskilling your competencies

The user experiences (see scenario 5 or 6) showed that ChatGPT might generate differ-
ent results depending on the way (e.g., wording) the question was asked, even if the con-
versation was about the same topic. Kuhail (2023) stated that user interaction style with
chatbots is considered integral to their effective use. Therefore, it is crucial to think about
how to get the most useful output to advance learning. While ChatGPT does not require
many technical or Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competencies, it
requires more critical thinking and question-asking competencies to get the best results.
One of the extracted tweets also mentioned that “As we develop our understanding and
approaches to #AI #ChatGPT integration in #education, we should incorporate these key
aspects: Critical Thinking, Ethical Considerations, Methods (language model used/data
sources) & Prompt Skill Development.” In this context, Fryer et al. (2019) mentioned that
students’ competencies in using chatbots affect their future experiences and motivation
when interacting with conversational agents. Therefore, for a better adoption and use of
chatbots, including ChatGPT, future research directions should focus on answering the
following research questions: what are the needed competencies to effectively use and
manage chatbots? and, how are these competencies developed?

Developing humanized chatbots

While ChatGPT has proven humanized to some extent (e.g., by giving greetings and
apologizing), we concluded that this technology lacks reflective thinking or revealing
emotions (see scenario 7). This might limit the immersiveness of users in education
when using this technology. This was also noticed by one of the interviewees who stated
that “most of the time I find it enjoyable and satisfying to interact with it, as it is a joy to
get quick and accurate answers to my questions. Occasionally, however, when it comes to
emotions, it can be a little disappointing to find that it does not provide me with emo-
tional value” (Student of Law, China, familiarity is: 2).

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 21 of 24

Skjuve et al. (2022) stated that most of the developed chatbots are task-oriented and
do not ensure social relational qualities, such as sharing history and allowing personal
intimacy. Hudlicka (2016) further stated the importance of considering virtual rela-
tionships, where students interact with virtual agents, to enhance learning outcomes.
Future research should, therefore, focus on how to provide humanized chatbots in
education by relying, for instance, on various theories that focus on understanding
relationship formation between humans, such as social exchange theory (Cook et al.,
2013), Levinger’s ABCDE model (Levinger, 1980), and SPT (Altman & Taylor, 1973).
It is also crucial to investigate how human–chatbot relationships might impact stu-
dents’ learning outcomes.
On the other hand, some researchers took humanization to another level by treating
ChatGPT as a human, where they listed it as one of the co-authors in an article pub-
lished in an academic journal (O’Connor & ChatGPT, 2023). This raises various con-
cerns about the regulatory laws of humanizing and treating intelligent chatbots. For
example, would it be ethical for a journal to treat ChatGPT as a human and accept it
as a co-author? What if a magazine staff took credit for articles authored by chatbots?
What are the standards of personhood in academic writing? This brings to memory
the monkey selfie case and concepts of originality (Guadamuz, 2016), authorship
(Rosati, 2017), and copyright (Guadamuz, 2018).

Developing responsible chatbots

Chatbots should be designed with considerations about inclusion, usability, techni-
cal aspects, ethics, and best practices for their use (Durall & Kapros, 2020). How-
ever, despite the evolution of technology used in chatbots, like the case of ChatGPT,
our user experiences (see scenarios 8, 9 and 10) revealed that these considerations
are not fully respected, and ChatGPT might have harmful behaviors, such as dishon-
esty, manipulation, and misinformation. Consequently, it might hurt users, especially
those with low ICT backgrounds, rather than helping them. It is therefore crucial to
think about how to design responsible chatbots in education. In this context, Respon-
sible AI is concerned with the design, implementation and use of ethical, transparent,
and accountable AI technology in order to reduce biases, promote fairness and equal-
ity, and help facilitate the interpretability and explainability of outcomes, which are
particularly pertinent in an educational context (Barredo Arrieta et al., 2020). Design-
ing chatbots for educational use should be guided by user-centred design principles
and also consider the social, emotional, cognitive, and pedagogical aspects (Kuhail,
2023). It is therefore important to develop responsible chatbots by going beyond
privacy, security, and the appropriate use of personal data, to also create guidelines,
principles, and strategies for responsible chatbots that align with fundamental human
values and with our legal system. In this context, one of the extracted tweets stated
“I get the concern… but the response is like burying heads in the sand. AI tools like
this will be part of the world these children live in. They need to be taught how to use
this – appropriately, ethically, safely & responsibly. #AI #Education #ChatGPT.” Future
research directions should therefore investigate how to design responsible chatbots
that could safely be used in education.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 22 of 24

Conclusion and implications

This study followed a three-stage instrumental case study, namely social network anal-
ysis of tweets, content analysis of interviews, and investigation of user experiences, to
examine the concerns of using chatbots in education, among early adopters, through the
study of using ChatGPT. The obtained results revealed that while ChatGPT is a powerful
tool in education, it still needs to be used with more caution, and more guidelines about
how to use it safely in education should be established. This study further revealed sev-
eral research directions and questions that researchers and practitioners should investi-
gate for a better and safe adoption of chatbots, specifically ChatGPT.
The findings of this study have various implications. From a theoretical perspec-
tive, this study provides more findings and insights into the ongoing debate on using
chatbots in education. It also elaborates on the different theories to consider when
developing chatbots, such as those on the relationship formation between humans.
The study also points out the need for new teaching philosophy to cater to the new
reform of education using chatbots. From a practical perspective, the discussion on
‘upskilling competencies’ highlights the need to develop curricula to upskill teachers’
and students’ competencies in dealing with the current and future advancement of
chatbots. A possible direction might be investigating the most effective strategies for
designing and implementing curricula on the use and understanding of chatbots and
their potential impact on current and future education. Practical implications could
also be seen on how to develop responsible chatbots in education by going beyond
the typical privacy issue and focusing more on human values.
It should be noted that this study has some limitations that should be acknowl-
edged and further researched. For instance, this study mainly focused on early adop-
ters of ChatGPT in education. It also relied on qualitative analysis without the use
of quantitative analysis. Particularly, SNA provides a cross-sectional perspective and
the tweets are limited to a specific time period including Tweets in English. Addi-
tionally, SNA with different search queries might lead to different results. Moreover,
the number of participants involved in this study was limited (19 interviewees and
3 educators). However, despite these limitations, this study provided a solid ground
for revealing the concerns about using chatbots, specifically ChatGPT, in education,
among early adopters. Future research directions could focus on conducting one step
forward by implementing ChatGPT within teaching practices, and investigating how
human tutors and machines (ChatGPT) could work together to achieve an educa-
tional objective, as well as the changes and outcomes brought to the education field
(e.g., evolutionary or revolutionary).

Abbreviations
AI Artificial intelligence
GPT Generative pre-trained transformer
ICT Information and communication technology
SNA Social network analysis
t-SNE T-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding

Acknowledgements
Not applicable.

Author contributions
Each author contributed evenly to this manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Tlili et al. Smart Learning Environments (2023) 10:15 Page 23 of 24

Funding
Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Received: 22 January 2023 Accepted: 17 February 2023

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