Views on ChatGPT by Top-Ranked Universities: Opportunities and Pedagogical Implications for Teaching and Learning

Studies on ChatGPT have mainly revolved around views expressed in newspapers about ChatGPT and general discussions about the benefits, limitations and opportunities for utilizing ChatGPT in Higher Education (HE). A review of the literature indicates limited research on ChatGPT, particularly a synthesis of the official views and guidelines of top-ranked universities on the uses, challenges, and opportunities brought by ChatGPT, which can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the current state and recommendations for academics and educators. By employing the corpus assisted discourse analysis approach, this study examined the key themes and emotions elicited by evaluations or appraisals of the ChatGPT situation from a self-built corpus consisting of 158 articles from 46 top-ranked U.S. universities and 34 U.K. ones. The results showed that three salient themes were discussed on the official websites of these universities, namely ChatGPT as an AI text and content generator, use of ChatGPT in teaching and learning, and potential implications and opportunities of using ChatGPT in HE. Bias, concern, worry, threat, fear, and trust were the key emotions in the appraisals. Using examples collected from our corpus, this study offers an in-depth discussion of the appraisals of the situation in relation to the use of ChatGPT in HE. The insights gained have pedagogical implications for academics and educators and may offer evidence-informed guidance on the use of ChatGPT