Can Large Language Models Provide Feedback to Students? A Case Study on ChatGPT

Autor: Wei Dai, Jionghao Lin, Flora Jin, Tongguang Li, Yi-Shan Tsai, Dragan Gasevic, Guanliang Chen
Rok vydání: 2023
DOI: 10.35542/osf.io/hcgzj
Popis: Educational feedback has been widely acknowledged as an effective approach to improving student learning. However, scaling effective practices can be laborious and costly, which motivated researchers to work on automated feedback systems (AFS). Inspired by the recent advancements in the pre-trained language models (e.g., ChatGPT), we posit that such models might advance the existing knowledge of textual feedback generation in AFS because of their capability to offer natural-sounding and detailed responses. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the feasibility of using ChatGPT to provide students with feedback to help them learn better. Specifically, we first examined the readability of ChatGPT-generated feedback. Then, we measured the agreement between ChatGPT and the instructor when assessing students' assignments according to the marking rubric. Finally, we used a well-known theoretical feedback framework to further investigate the effectiveness of the feedback generated by ChatGPT. Our results show that i) ChatGPT is capable of generating more detailed feedback that fluently and coherently summarizes students' performance than human instructors; ii) ChatGPT achieved high agreement with the instructor when assessing the topic of students' assignments; and iii) ChatGPT could provide feedback on the process of students completing the task, which benefits students developing learning skills.
Databáze: OpenAIRE