Exploratory Evidence on ChatGPT Adoption Among Undergraduate Engineering Students in Medellín, Colombia: A 2023 Logistic Regression and a 2025 Descriptive Pilot

Evidence on generative artificial intelligence adoption remains limited in Latin American engineering education, particularly for undergraduate populations in which paid employment may shape study practices. This exploratory study examined reported ChatGPT (GPT-4o model) use among students enrolled in two undergraduate engineering programs at the Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano in Medellín, Colombia. Technology Acceptance Model and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology research were used as background literature; their core constructs were not measured or tested. The primary 2023 analytic file contained 64 complete records, including 41 “yes” and 23 “no” responses to the direct-use item. Descriptive statistics and a prespecified binary logistic regression evaluated associations with age, gender, and employment status. Age was negatively associated with reported use (odds ratio = 0.910 per year, 95% CI: 0.834–0.993; p=0.0336). No statistically significant association was detected for gender (p=0.3424) or employment status (p=0.2208), and the wide confidence intervals preclude conclusions of no effect. The apparent AUC was 0.719 (95% CI: 0.589–0.849). A separate 2025 pilot (n=30), based on an expanded questionnaire and an independent convenience sample, was analyzed descriptively and not as a replication. In that pilot, all respondents selected ChatGPT, 93.3% selected Gemini (Gemini 2.5 Flash model), and 53.3% selected Copilot (powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model); the most frequent activities were writing-related support (63.3%) and both idea generation and concept explanation (60.0% each). The findings provide context-specific, hypothesis-generating evidence and support larger multi-institutional studies that directly measure acceptance constructs, use intensity, verification behavior, and educational outcomes.