Students’ Preference in Using Chatbots for Academic Writing

Abstract

Objective: To study the feature preference(s) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots among Post Graduate students in the Commerce and Management domain who have experienced Chatbots for academic writing. Methods: The authors used the combined AHP-TOPSIS method to approach the 214 student’s responses studying in autonomous institutions under the University of Mysore, India. Findings: The results show that the students prefer tools that provide information from authentic sources, followed by tools that are easy to use. Open source and style of presentation are the other preferences. This study has identified the top nine Chatbots identified by the students, and the authors used the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) - TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method to present the tools with a defined rank based on priority. Novelty: Authors observed during the literature review that there are research studies that record and discuss the experience of use of Chatbots. However, there needs to be more studies that analyse the user preferences in these AI tools focused on education. Considering the usage of these tools in academic writing, this study stands out and reports the gap in this area. Keywords: Chatbots; Artificial Intelligence; Content Generative Tools; User Preference Study; AHPTOPSIS Model