Integration of ChatGPT Into a Course for Medical Students:Explorative Study on Teaching Scenarios, Students'Perception, and Applications

Background: Text-generating artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT offers many opportunities and challenges inmedical education. Acquiring practical skills necessary for using AI in a clinical context is crucial, especially for medicaleducation.Objective: This explorative study aimed to investigate the feasibility of integrating ChatGPT into teaching units and toevaluate the course and the importance of AI-related competencies for medical students. Since a possible application ofChatGPT in the medical field could be the generation of information for patients, we further investigated how such informationis perceived by students in terms of persuasiveness and quality.Methods: ChatGPT was integrated into 3 different teaching units of a blended learning course for medical students. Usinga mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected. As baseline data, we assessed students' character-istics, including their openness to digital innovation. The students evaluated the integration of ChatGPT into the course andshared their thoughts regarding the future of text-generating AI in medical education. The course was evaluated based on theKirkpatrick Model, with satisfaction, learning progress, and applicable knowledge considered as key assessment levels. InChatGPT-integrating teaching units, students evaluated videos featuring information for patients regarding their persuasivenesson treatment expectations in a self-experience experiment and critically reviewed information for patients written usingChatGPT 3.5 based on different prompts.Results: A total of 52 medical students participated in the study. The comprehensive evaluation of the course revealedelevated levels of satisfaction, learning progress, and applicability specifically in relation to the ChatGPT-integrating teachingunits. Furthermore, all evaluation levels demonstrated an association with each other. Higher openness to digital innovationwas associated with higher satisfaction and, to a lesser extent, with higher applicability. AI-related competencies in othercourses of the medical curriculum were perceived as highly important by medical students. Qualitative analysis highlightedpotential use cases of ChatGPT in teaching and learning. In ChatGPT-integrating teaching units, students rated informationfor patients generated using a basic ChatGPT prompt as "moderate" in terms of comprehensibility, patient safety, and thecorrect application of communication rules taught during the course. The students' ratings were considerably improved usingan extended prompt. The same text, however, showed the smallest increase in treatment expectations when compared withinformation provided by humans (patient, clinician, and expert) via videos.Conclusions: This study offers valuable insights into integrating the development of AI competencies into a blended learningcourse. Integration of ChatGPT enhanced learning experiences for medical students