Abstract:

The design of educational tools and technologies, such as visuo-haptic simulators (VHSs), has been shaped by embodied cognition theory which states that that cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body´s interaction with the world. In the particular case of physics, being able to feel the applied forces to objects that have been studied in end-of-the-book exercises is much more engaging than just solving the problem itself. The force applied to a block on an inclined plane is one of the most typical examples that vast majority of students struggle with.

A first attempt in a learning sequence within a traditional scenario of a block on an inclined plane is presented here. The study is comprised in a three-fold way. Firstly, a brief lecture on the topic is given to the students. Secondly, an activity with a VHS is worked out. Finally, after the students have been exposed to the VHS experience, they challenge ChatGPT to confirm or to defy what they have learnt. The same activities that were worked out with the VHS were given as a prompt to ChatGPT. If ChatGPT did not return the same answer, then the students would double check their work in class with their teammates so that they would find out if the mistake was either in their work or in ChatGPT. By judging ChatGPT performance, the students now become the ones in real charge of their learning. The roles are completely reversed since the students become the teachers, ChatGPT plays the role of the student and the teacher becomes a facilitator.

The previously described journey was tested with 19 first year engineering students at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, during the February-June 2024 term. Those students served as an experimental group. Feedback perception surveys about the VHS and on the ChatGPT experience were administered to the students who enthusiastically expressed favorable views regarding their interaction with both the VHS and ChatGPT. The VHS and the ChatGPT helped to keep the students’ motivation on track, changed the stimulus of the class and stressed the usefulness of guided activities with cutting-edge technology. ChatGPT reinforced the main ideas involved and gave students the confidence that most of the time s is lacking in physics classes. Pretests and post-tests were applied so that learning gains could be computed. These were compared to a control group comprised of 28 first year engineering students that received a traditional instruction on the same topic and worked out end-of-the-book exercises during the August-December 2023 term. Preliminary results are encouraging since the average learning gain once the ChatGPT activity was done in the experimental group is larger than the one for the control group with a p-value of 0.004.

Keywords:

Education, ChatGPT, Haptics.