General Chemistry and ChatGPT

Why oil and water do not mix is a commonly held misconception. The scientifically accurate explanation is, unfortunately, unpopular on the internet. Because ChatGPT pulls its content from the internet, I expected to see scientific inaccuracies in its answers. The outputs met my expectations; however, they may sound quite convincing to a novice. Yikes. Goal of Assignment: Students generate and iterate questions about topics with a high prevalence of misconceptions. Core question: Why don't oil and water mix? Student directions: Create a line in a table for each ChatGPT inquiry. Your table headings should be (1) question/prompt; (2) ChatGPT output; (3) your critique of the output; (4) insights you gained about the chemistry concepts. Our goal for discussion will be to generate a scientifically accurate explanation of why oil and water don't mix; be prepared to participate.

Here are some recent articles from the Journal of Chemical Education. Please note that these are not reports on chemistry education research; however, they may be helpful for thinking about using ChatGPT in your teaching.

Exintaris, B., Karunaratne, N. and Yuriev, E. Metacognition and Critical Thinking: Using ChatGPT-Generated Responses as Prompts for Critique in a Problem-Solving Workshop (SMARTCHEMPer). J. Chem. Educ. 2023, ASAP.

Clark, T. M. Investigating the Use of an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot with General Chemistry Exam Questions. J. Chem. Educ. 2023, 100, 5, 1905–1916.

Fergus, S., Botha, M. and Ostovar, M. Evaluating Academic Answers Generated Using ChatGPT. J. Chem. Educ. 2023, 100, 4, 1672–1675.

Humphry, T. and Fuller, A. L. Potential ChatGPT Use in Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratories. J. Chem. Educ. 2023, 100, 4, 1434–1