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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1417642
This article is part of the Research Topic Continuing Engineering Education for a Sustainable Future View all 15 articles
Who is Solving the Challenge? The Use of ChatGPT in Mathematics and Biology Courses Using Challenge-Based Learning
Provisionally accepted
Mariana E Elizondo-García 1
Héctor Hernández-De La Cerda 1
Ingrid G Benavides-García 1
Patricia Caratozzolo 2
Jorge Membrillo-Hernández 2*- 1 Directorate of Educational Innovation and Digital Learning, Vice Presidency of Educational Innovation and Academic Regulations, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
- 2 Institute for the Future of Education, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico
The advent of Artificial Intelligence has revolutionized how students can solve academic assignments. In particular, the Conditional Generative Pretrained Transformer, ChatGPT, has become a powerful tool for generating quick solutions to academic assignments in higher education. However, we are still at the beginning of its use and do not yet know the scope or consequences that this will bring to developing both disciplinary and transversal graduation competencies. Here, we report a pilot study in two digital subjects in higher education with the resolution of activities using ChatGPT. The students were exposed to carrying out these assignments individually, and then they verified the quality of their work with traditional sources of high academic quality. After surveying what they experienced, some declared that this was their first time using ChatGPT, while others had already used the tool. The tool has many advantages for the student, such as the immediacy of the information, ease, and availability. However, many concerns arose about the veracity and depth of the topics covered and discomfort based on whether the tool would supplant the teacher or whether the development of skills and competencies would be affected. The need for urgent modifications to the code of academic integrity and the application of new ethics for the use of AI is clear. Our results indicate that teachers should be prepared to use AI expeditiously and that detectors for text generated by AI should be available for evaluation on using this powerful tool.
Keywords: Educational innovation, artificial intelligence, higher education, ChatGPT, Challenge-based learning
Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Elizondo-García, Hernández-De La Cerda, Benavides-García, Caratozzolo and Membrillo-Hernández. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jorge Membrillo-Hernández, Institute for the Future of Education, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico
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