Inspiring and/or scary?
Emotional tensions in student responses to formative feedback from chatbots at a master’s level course in counseling
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/lom.v18i31.149114Keywords:
GAI, learning, higher education, formative feedback, counseling educationAbstract
This study contributes to an emerging field of research on generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and feedback in higher education by examining how master's students attending a course in counseling respond to chatbots as a “relevant other” (Carless & Young, 2024) in formative feedback practices. Using a Bakhtinian (1981) dialogic framework and a longitudinal mixed-methods approach, we show three distinct student responses to chatbot voices: positive, skeptical, and struck. Our findings reveal students' emotional ambivalence and the tensions between trust/distrust and acceptance/rejection of chatbot voices. These tensions give rise to different understandings of what it means to be critical in an academic context, along with ambivalence between expecting “the right answers” from chatbots and engaging in a dialogical learning process. We argue that acknowledging these emotional tensions is crucial in realizing GAI's learning potential (Maurya & DeDiego, 2023) in both academic work and future counseling practice.
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