StuGPTViz: A Visual Analytics Approach to Understand Student-ChatGPT Interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces StuGPTViz, a visual analytics tool that analyzes student-ChatGPT interactions to help educators understand and improve AI-assisted learning experiences.

Contribution

It presents a novel visual analytics system for tracking and analyzing student-ChatGPT interactions, supported by a new dataset and a coding scheme for interaction patterns.

Findings

StuGPTViz effectively reveals interaction patterns and response quality over time.

Expert interviews confirm the system's usefulness for pedagogical insights.

Case studies demonstrate its potential to enhance AI-driven education strategies.

Abstract

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs), especially ChatGPT, into education is poised to revolutionize students' learning experiences by introducing innovative conversational learning methodologies. To empower students to fully leverage the capabilities of ChatGPT in educational scenarios, understanding students' interaction patterns with ChatGPT is crucial for instructors. However, this endeavor is challenging due to the absence of datasets focused on student-ChatGPT conversations and the complexities in identifying and analyzing the evolutional interaction patterns within conversations. To address these challenges, we collected conversational data from 48 students interacting with ChatGPT in a master's level data visualization course over one semester. We then developed a coding scheme, grounded in the literature on cognitive levels and thematic analysis, to categorize students' interaction patterns with ChatGPT. Furthermore, we present a visual analytics system, StuGPTViz, that tracks and compares temporal patterns in student prompts and the quality of ChatGPT's responses at multiple scales, revealing significant pedagogical insights for instructors. We validated the system's effectiveness through expert interviews with six data visualization instructors and three case studies. The results confirmed StuGPTViz's capacity to enhance educators' insights into the pedagogical value of ChatGPT. We also discussed the potential research opportunities of applying visual analytics in education and developing AI-driven personalized learning solutions.