Effects of ChatGPT ‐Assisted Teacher Feedback on College Students' Critical Thinking Skills and Perceptions of Argumentative Writing

Background Although teacher feedback is effective in facilitating argumentative writing and developing critical thinking skills, students often encounter difficulties in both linguistic and substantive aspects due to time constraints. Integrating ChatGPT into teacher feedback may provide an ideal approach for cultivating students' critical thinking skills in argumentative writing. Objectives A quasi‐experiment was conducted with undergraduate students to investigate how ChatGPT‐assisted teacher feedback influenced their critical thinking skills and perceptions. Students were required to complete two argumentative writing tasks on specific topics over an 18‐week period. Methods The control group ( n = 32) received teacher feedback, whereas the experimental group ( n = 32) received ChatGPT‐assisted teacher feedback. Data were collected through questionnaires, content analysis, and interviews. Results and Conclusions The questionnaire results demonstrated that ChatGPT‐assisted teacher feedback significantly improved students' critical thinking skills compared with teacher feedback alone. The experimental group had a higher revision rate (91.00%) than the control group (85.21%). Specifically, the experimental group showed higher frequencies of evaluative, analytical, and creative behaviours reflected in instruction (I), evaluation (Ev), demonstration (D), question‐closely (Q), and continuation (Co) feedback, despite the fact that the control group demonstrated greater recognition and understanding through instruction (I) and evaluation (Ev) feedback. The interviews indicated that students perceived ChatGPT‐assisted teacher feedback as comprehensive and reasonable; however, they also identified areas for improvement, such as precision and professionalism. Our findings have several implications for future studies. Teachers should consider the responsible and ethical use of ChatGPT as an ideal scaffold, maintain scepticism towards its outputs, and improve their information literacy to use it effectively.