2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The growing popularity of generative AI (genAI), particularly ChatGPT, has sparked enthusiasm and caution among education practitioners and researchers. To harness the full potential of generative AI in educational contexts, it is crucial to thoroughly analyze its impact and suitability for different educational purposes. This work serves as an initial step towards our long-term research goal of integrating generative AI as a "brainstorming partner" in the context of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Rather than immediately outlining requirements and developing components for ChatGPT to function as an independent brainstorming partner, the primary objective of this paper is to examine ChatGPT's impact in a collaborative creative ideation process.

As an example of CSCL, this paper delves into students' creative group brainstorming activities. In this educational context, the learning objective lies in encouraging students to creatively apply their factual knowledge without rigid concerns about correctness. Diverging from recent concerns about hallucination and academic integrity involving genAI in education, our paper introduces a unique application of genAI where these concerns hold relatively less significance. Furthermore, we quantitatively analyze the influence of ChatGPT on the creativity of ideas emerging from group brainstorming sessions. Specifically, we describe how students incorporate ChatGPT into their ideation process and observe its impact on the perceived creativity levels of the generated ideas. Additionally, we explore whether leveraging ChatGPT leads to more homogeneous ideas among students, potentially challenging the collaborative and diversity-centric learning objective of group brainstorming.

Our investigation involves a statistical analysis and natural language processing techniques to digital logs, discussion messages and product design ideas generated by 33 students over a two-week period in a graduate-level product engineering class. The students were randomly organized into teams comprising of 4 to 5 individuals to engage in group discussions in an online platform. Their task was to brainstorm and discuss new product ideas that aligned with specific user requirements. In select groups, ChatGPT was introduced as an additional member, providing students with the capability to direct questions during their ideation process.

Our findings illustrate that students predominantly utilize ChatGPT during their initial ideation stage, injecting their own modifications and enhancements to its responses. Surprisingly, ideas generated with ChatGPT are perceived as more creative by the students, potentially attributed to their relatively detailed descriptions. Furthermore, our observations indicate that the use of ChatGPT does not necessarily lead to homogenous ideas, as students' prompts to ChatGPT and its responses exhibit linguistic diversity.

This paper not only offers a unique application of genAI in the educational landscape but also provides valuable insights into the nuanced dynamics of integrating ChatGPT as a collaborative partner during creative ideation. Our results pave the way for further exploration, showcasing the potential of genAI to enhance collaborative learning experiences while fostering creativity among students.