Children on ChatGPT Readability in an Educational Context: Myth or Opportunity?

In this work, we present the results of a preliminary exploration aiming to understand whether the use of ChatGPT in an educational context can be an asset to meet the specific needs of the students. In particular, we focus on the possibility of adapting the responses to online inquiries related to the primary school curriculum to meet the expectations of readers with different literacy levels. The analysis of feedback elicited from children (9- to 10-year-olds) in three 4(th) grade classrooms indicates that ChatGPT can adapt its responses to the 4(th) grade level. However, it still needs improvement to reach the right level of readability. Outcomes from this work can inspire future research directions involving technologies like ChatGPT to adapt learning paths to suit a broad range of students with varied cognitive skills. The potential of such tools to support teachers in their effort to adapt to individual learning needs is still to be fully exploited.