Chatbot as Academic Companion: Exploring Education Students’ Narratives in Using Artificial Intelligence in Learning

This qualitative narrative study aims to explore education students’ experiences, challenges, and opportunities using artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots at a college of education in Kalibo, Aklan. This study applied a narrative inquiry as the research design to delineate the experiences, challenges, and opportunities of six participants with experience of at least three years of AI chatbots. The researchers used semistructured interviews to elicit detailed and in-depth narratives. The data analysis to generate themes in this study was the Collaizi method. The study revealed that education students' experiences in using chatbots revolve around their being established digital natives, exploring chatbots' question-and-answer interface, and utilizing it when the deadline is near. The challenges encountered by the students using chatbots were the stress from hallucinations and fact-checking, their inexperience with the technology, and the internet connectivity problem. The opportunities for students to use chatbots were efficiency in academic work, awareness of technology dependency, a guide for language improvement, and a chatbot as a savior in times of procrastination. These findings suggested that digitally literate education students utilized chatbots when dealing with short-term necessities and convenience. Challenges resonated with the call to expand students' ethical awareness of using chatbots. Thus, chatbots revealed the budding potential as an academic companion but also a call for dialogue among academes, which should and should not be allowed.