Generative AI Chatbots in Education Technology:

A Critical Review of Feedback, Assessment, and Governance

Mahshid Manouchehri1,*

1 Amity University Dubai Campus, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai, 345019, United Arab Emirates

Received: January 03, 2024 Revised: March 05, 2024 Accepted: May 29, 2024 ⋆ Corresponding author

ABSTRACT

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have become a disruptive education technology because they combine

dialogue, content generation, reasoning support, and immediate feedback in a single interface. Their rapid adoption

has created a strategic challenge for schools, universities, and professional education providers: the same tools that

can expand formative support and learner agency can also weaken assessment validity, privacy protection, academic

integrity, and equitable participation. This review synthesises peer-reviewed literature published from 2020 to 2023

to examine how generative AI chatbots should be understood within education technology. The paper focuses on

three interdependent areas: feedback and learner support, assessment redesign, and institutional governance. The

review finds that the most defensible use of generative AI is not tool substitution but learning-design augmentation:

chatbots can support explanation, drafting, questioning, and formative feedback when teachers define learning goals,

evidence requirements, and acceptable use conditions. The main risks are not limited to plagiarism or inaccurate

outputs; they also include hidden inequity, over-reliance, weakened disciplinary judgement, and policy-practice

misalignment. The paper proposes a responsible adoption framework that links pedagogical affordances, assessment

redesign, AI literacy, and governance controls. The contribution is a publication-ready conceptual synthesis for

institutions seeking to adopt generative AI in education technology without reducing learning to automated content

production.

Keywords: Generative artificial intelligence Education technology AI chatbots Formative feedback Assessment

redesign Academic integrity AI governance

1. INTRODUCTION

Generative AI chatbots have altered the trajectory of education

technology more quickly than most earlier digital tools.

Learning management systems, adaptive platforms, and analytics

dashboards generally entered institutions through procurement,

pilot studies, and gradual policy development. Generative

AI systems entered through everyday public access.

Students and teachers could use them before institutions had

developed policies, assessment rules, or professional development

routines. This mismatch between adoption speed and

governance readiness explains why generative AI has become

a central issue in education technology strategy rather than

only a new classroom application.

The debate should not be reduced to whether chatbots should

be allowed or prohibited. Recent AI-in-education scholarship

shows that the field has already moved from tool-level

experimentation toward questions of pedagogy, agency, human

judgement, and institutional implementation [1, 2, 3].

Generative AI strengthens this shift because it is not confined

to a single function. It can draft explanations, translate language,

propose examples, critique text, simulate dialogue,