Supporting Student Writing with A.I.
The Essay is NOT Dead!
In fact, tools like ChatGPT can be used to SUPPORT student writing.
With that being said, it means we need to rethink how we assign activities with writing components.
Managing Writing Assignments
To support students writing process and reduce the potential for issues of academic integrity:
- Get to know your students’ writing, voice, and style.
- Understand the limitations of A.I. tools like ChatGPT to review their work in questionable situations (e.g. ChatGPT is terrible at citing references).
- Design writing assignments with the following structure:
- Long term project (e.g. semester)
- Chunked tasks, according to:
- Learning and skills goals
- A.I. Support goals
- Human-feedback goals
- Regularly engage with and discuss best practices for using A.I. in school, work, and daily life.
Free A.I. Content Detectors:
If all else fails, there are several free tools available for checking the probability that a piece of text is human or A.I. generated .
- AI Content Detector | GPT-3 | ChatGPT – Writer
- AI Content Detector | AI Detector – Copyleaks
- Free AI Content Detector Tool (GPT-3 and ChatGPT) | Sapling
- AI Content Detector (Free) – Detect GPT-3 + ChatGPT
Design Strategy
Chunking Projects to Facilitate the Use of A.I. Tools
A.I. Tools have some unique capabilities that can be used to support students’ understanding of the writing process and to help them generate ideas for their writing projects. The key is to break down writing projects into manageable chunks, where each chunk should have the potential to be supported by A.I. and for the students to receive feedback on the deliverable in some form.
The following Chunking Projects Worksheet has been designed to make this process more manageable for you. Try using it with an existing writing project or create a new one!
Try it Yourself!
Chunking Projects for A.I. Worksheet.doc
Chunking Projects for A.I. Worksheet: Research Paper Example.pdf