Have AI tools found their way into schools using the freely accessible ChatGPT tool as an example? How eagerly do students use the new tools for their school work? How uncertain are teachers about their role as initiators and facilitators of the learning process?

AI tools have not only existed since February 2023, when the ChatGPT tool was made available to the public. Zhang & Begum Aslang (2021) and Feng & Law (2021) summarized several years researching the use of AI applications in schools and universities and their implications for education. Zhang & Begum (2021) report having reviewed 40 empirical studies on AI in education published between 1993 and 2020. Feng & Law (2021) reviewed more than 1800 articles on artificial intelligence in education from 2010 and 2019.

However, since the release of the ChatGPT tool, the topic has reached a wider audience and gained a new emotional intensity. People of different professions, ages, and educational backgrounds have felt compelled to engage with it more intensively. Artificial intelligence has become part of our everyday lives. It has changed them, and it will most likely continue to change them. VanLehn (2011) was able to show that personalised, digital 1:1 support and fine-grained feedback lead to similar learning outcomes as human support. The change that has already begun has aroused emotions such as curiosity, enthusiasm for the new possibilities, but also fears about whether and how to keep up with the change. In many cases, schools have also responded with concerns about the role of the teacher and the learning effectiveness of school homework in the future. The uncertainty seems justified.  After all, the ChatGPT chatbot is a technology that can process natural human language and generate a response, and it can be used for tasks such as content generation in both native and foreign languages, explanation, translation, and much more. Even if the tasks are not part of everyday school life, it is assumed here that the AI tools are used in a school context at home. This has an influence on the institutionalised educational processes, which are not independent of the processes that take place outside. The question of how their benefits affect learning outcomes remains under-researched (de Witt, 2023).

In this contribution I will first present the theoretical background. Then I will present the first results of the survey I conducted for my PhD thesis. The aim of the survey is to take a closer look at the use of ChatGPT among students. 

The sample consists of more than 100 students in Austria at secondary level 1 and 2. The surveyed students were between 12 and 19 years old. The survey took place in the schools in the form of paper-pencil questionnaires. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to find out the specific concerns and hopes of teachers. The interviews are analysed using grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 2010), which is established as a hypothesis-generating method. The results form the initial basis for further research. The data from the surveys are analysed using descriptive statistics with IBM SPSS Statics version 27.

The results should reflect the current status of the use of AI tools in Austrian schools. It is hypothesised that, in addition to enthusiasm for the new possibilitiesof AI in education, there is also uncertainty on the part of both students and teachers. The contribution will end with the short summary and an outlook for the further research.

De Witt, C., Gloerfeld, C. & Wrede, S. E. (Ed.) (2023). Künstliche Intelligenz in der Bildung. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40079-8 Feng, S. & Law, N. (2021). Mapping artificial intelligence in education research: A network-based keyword analysis. International Journal of Artificial intelligence in Education, 31, 277–303. Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (2010): Grounded theory. Strategien qualitativer Forschung. Huber. VanLehn, K. (2011). The relative effectiveness of human tutoring, intelligent tutoring systems, and other tutoring systems. Educational Psychologist, 46(4), 197–221. https://doi. org/10.1080/00461520.2011.611369. Zhang, K., & Begum Aslan, A. (2021). AI technologies for education: Recent research & future directions. Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence, 2(2021), 100025, 1– 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2021.100025.