Empowering Higher Education with ChatGPT: Innovating University Instructional Design

The implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education has made significant advancements, particularly in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Among cutting-edge technologies, ChatGPT stands out as a tool which can generate human-like responses based on natural language prompts. While the release of ChatGPT has raised significant concerns about academic integrity in higher education, literature highlights its great potential for improving student learning. Accordingly, the present contribution aims to explore how to incorporate AI in the university educational context to enhance and support teachers and students in the teaching-learning process, while promoting a critical, ethical, and responsible use of the chatbot ChatGPT. Therefore, in this study an experimental research hypothesis to be carried out within the Degree course in Primary Education Sciences will be presented. Two groups of students will be involved: the first, the experimental group, made up of those enrolled at the University of Palermo and the second, the control group, enrolled in the same course, but attending the Agrigento site. The study aims to develop a critical and responsible approach in students, so that they are able to reflectively and consciously evaluate the role and effect of artificial intelligence in the educational environment, in order to achieve an improvement in the results of self-regulated learning, in the development of critical thinking and metacognitive processes.