Volume 3 • Issue 1 • PP: 20–28 • 2024
Generative AI Chatbots in Education Technology: A Critical Review of Feedback, Assessment, and Governance
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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.
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