Related Data for: The influences of ChatGPT on undergraduate students’ demonstrated and perceived interdisciplinary learning

The significance of interdisciplinary learning has been well-recognized by higher education institutions. However, when teaching interdisciplinary learning to junior undergraduate students, their limited disciplinary knowledge and underrepresentation of students from some disciplines can hinder their learning performance. ChatGPT’s ability to engage in human-like conversations and massive knowledge grounded in different disciplines holds promise in enriching undergraduate students with the disciplinary knowledge that they lack. In this exploratory study, we engaged 130 undergraduate students in a three-condition quasi-experiment to examine how ChatGPT influences their demonstrated and perceived interdisciplinary learning quality, as measured by their online posts and surveys, respectively. The content analysis results show that overall, students’ online posts could be coded into four interdisciplinary learning dimensions: diversity, disciplinary grounding, cognitive advancement, and integration. The means of the first three dimensions were close to the middle level (ranging from 0.708 to 0.897, and the middle level is 1), whereas the mean score of integration was relatively small (i.e., 0.229). Students under the ChatGPT condition demonstrated improved disciplinary grounding. Regarding their perceived interdisciplinary learning quality, we did not find significant differences across the three conditions in the pre- or post-surveys. The findings underscore ChatGPT’s ability to enhance students’ disciplinary grounding and the significance of further fostering their integration skills.

跨学科学习的重要性已得到高等教育机构的广泛认可。然而，在向低年级本科生教授跨学科学习内容时，学生自身学科知识储备有限，以及部分学科学生占比不足的问题，会对其学习成效造成阻碍。ChatGPT具备类人对话能力与跨学科海量知识储备，有望为本科生补足其欠缺的学科知识。本探索性研究招募130名本科生，开展三条件准实验，以分别通过学生线上发帖与问卷调查的方式，探究ChatGPT对其外显及感知到的跨学科学习质量的影响。内容分析结果显示，整体而言学生的线上发帖可被编码为四个跨学科学习维度：多样性、学科根基、认知进阶与整合性。前三个维度的得分均值接近中等水平（区间为0.708至0.897，中等水平为1），而整合性维度的平均得分相对偏低（仅为0.229）。使用ChatGPT组的学生展现出更扎实的学科根基。关于学生感知到的跨学科学习质量，我们在课前与课后问卷调查中均未发现三个实验条件间存在显著差异。本研究结果凸显了ChatGPT提升学生学科根基的能力，以及进一步培养学生整合能力的重要性。