How to harness the potential of ChatGPT in education?

Abstract

Technological advancements, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have played an increasingly important role in transforming education. More recently, ground-breaking AI applications like ChatGPT have demonstrated the potential to bring radical changes to the educational landscape due to their capability to understand complex questions, generate plausible responses and human-like writing, and assist with the completion of complex tasks. However, ChatGPT has limitations in the quality of its output, such as the inclusion of inaccurate, fabricated and biased information and the lack of critical thinking and in-depth understanding. The combinations of these capabilities and limitations along with external factors (e.g., the growing demand for personalized learning support, the irresponsible and unethical use of AI) presents a range of opportunities and challenges to the potential use of ChatGPT in education. This paper presents a thorough SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis of ChatGPT, based on which we propose how ChatGPT can be properly integrated into teaching and learning practice to harness its potential in education.