Ethical implications of using artificial intelligence and gamification to improve teaching in English courses: a case study in Mexican education

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the world, generating new perspectives in industry and educational institutions. In English language learning, ChatGPt (a generative pre-trained transformer) has become an extremely useful and easy-to-implement tool in the classroom, revolutionizing conventional teaching methods. Using ChatGPt and gamification for teaching English offers tremendous versatility for interacting with students, generating curiosity, motivating exploration, and encouraging the development of new ideas. However, ChatGPt has been reported to have several problems, including fake references, a high risk of plagiarism, limited analytical capabilities, and putting user privacy at risk. Therefore, the aim of this work is to develop an innovative teaching sequence using ChatGPT and gamification, which promotes students' critical and analytical thinking to improve the English language learning process. This work focuses on the impact of the recent national English language teaching program in Mexican public primary schools, called the “Programa Nacional de Inglés en Educación Básica” (PNIEB). This program, promoted by the Ministry of Public Education, is part of the national curriculum. Among the main results of this work, it is worth highlighting that ChatGPt is recommended only as an assistant for certain course activities, so in the early stages of its use, it is recommended to combine it with the gamification stream. The gamification stream combined with ChatGPt resulted in increased motivation and active participation, the development of language skills, and an active and participatory approach to the learning process.