Akiba, D.; Fraboni, M.C. AI-Supported Academic Advising: Exploring ChatGPT’s Current State and Future Potential toward Student Empowerment. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090885
Akiba, D.; Fraboni, M.C. AI-Supported Academic Advising: Exploring ChatGPT’s Current State and Future Potential toward Student Empowerment. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090885
Akiba, D.; Fraboni, M.C. AI-Supported Academic Advising: Exploring ChatGPT’s Current State and Future Potential toward Student Empowerment. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090885
Akiba, D.; Fraboni, M.C. AI-Supported Academic Advising: Exploring ChatGPT’s Current State and Future Potential toward Student Empowerment. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 885. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090885
Abstract
ChatGPT, a freely-accessible AI language model designed to generate human-like text responses to users, has been utilized in several areas, such as healthcare industry, to facilitate interactive dissemination of information. Academic advising has been an important factor in promoting success among university students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Unfortunately, however, student advising has been marred with problems, with the availability and accessibility of advisors being among the hurdles. The current study explores how ChatGPT might serve to make academic advising more accessible, efficient, and even effective. Researchers compiled a list of questions frequently asked by current and prospective students in a teacher education Bachelor’s degree program in the United States. Then, the questions were typed into the free version of ChatGPT and the answers generated were evaluated for their content and delivery. ChatGPT generated surprisingly high-quality answers, written in an authoritative yet supportive tone, and it was particularly adept at addressing general career-related questions comprehensively, such as career outlook. We argue that ChatGPT may complement, but not replace, human academic advisors and it may very well promote educational equity through empowering students from a wide range of backgrounds with the means to access effective advising.
Copyright:
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.
