Abstract:

Chat GPT has introduced many technological, pedagogical and social challenges into the educational system. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine usage as well as perception of Chat GPT amongst major participants of Croatian education system: high school students, college students, participants of lifelong learning including educators from different (high) educational institutions. For that purpose surveys were created and conducted amongst 265 respondents. They were divided into three groups: students (N1 = 163), educators (N2 = 69) and lifelong learning participants (LLL) (N3 = 33) in the period spanning from June 16 to July 12, 2023. Results indicate that 36.2% of educators and 30.3% of the LLL group never used Chat GPT. High school and college students, on the other hand, of which only 14.11% never did use it, show a different extreme. However, all three groups find Chat GPT useful. In this context Likert scale of 1 to 5 demonstrates 3.25 rating for educators with even higher 3.8 rating for both LLL cohort and students. Using Chat GPT brought satisfaction with its accuracy amongst respondents which range from 3.13 (educators) to 3.49 (students). Accordingly, educators and LLL mostly use Chat GPT for work, followed by fun and learning. Students, conversely, put learning first, followed by fun and various other activities. Over 90% of educators as well as LLL professionals believe that in the following 5-10 years, their jobs will not be replaced by Chat GPT or will be so only partially. Students are of similar attitude towards profession of educators. Nevertheless, for some professions, e.g. translators, 98% of students believe that AI will predominantly or completely replace them in 5-10 years. Regarding ethics and the general attitude towards Chat GPT and in comparison to usefulness, all three groups indicate at least a 0.5 lower rating. Amongst them, the LLL group implies the lowest rating of 2.69, followed by 2.78 and 3.3 ratings of educators and students, respectively. In the paper, further connections between respondents' characteristics (such as gender, age, profession) will be analyzed. Since Chat GPT is applicable in almost all areas of expertise, it can be a very useful tool for both educators as well as students – e.g. educators get a before-/after-class assistant whilst students attain a personalized learning experience.

Keywords:

Chat GPT, education, perception, usage.