Teaching and Learning Chemistry for the 21st Century Skills Through Artificial Intelligence - A Narrative Review

Abstract

This review provides an overview of how GAI assists in chemistry learning and teaching. Aspects such as 21st century skills and the tutoring ability of GAI were examined from the learning point of view, while also covering pedagogical aspects such as Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), visualization and representation levels of Chemistry, textual aspects, and problem-based learning (PBL). The GAI seemed to elicit students’ 21st century skills and, to a lesser extent, display a tutoring ability, depending on whether it was a free or paid version. Furthermore, the GAI requires objectivity and sufficient TPACK owing to its hallucinations and inconsistencies in definitions, diagram interpretation, and image generation, among others. Furthermore, the chatbots seemed to struggle with representation levels, generating responses with macro-level definitions for concepts requiring definitions at the sub-micro level. These inconsistencies and hallucinations, without meticulous verification, can lead to misconceptions. Moreover, social inequalities may negatively impact meaningful learning, as paid chatbots perform better than free versions in generating and interpreting chemistry images, among other abilities.