AI software like ChatGPT is changing learning. Essays, homework – the chatbot does it all. Use or prohibit, help or risk? How do schools deal with this?
“We live in a time of change and challenges, but I am sure that our Kaiser will lead us through these difficult times.” On a large monitor in the classroom of the Karolinen-Gymnasium in Frankenthal, Rhineland-Palatinate, the speech of an admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm II can be seen. It was not written by a contemporary witness, nor by a student, but by artificial intelligence (AI): ChatGPT.
Teacher Karin Reißer-Mahla came up with this task. The chatbot writes a speech and the students are supposed to analyze it. “The educational goal is for the students to deal with it critically but constructively,” explains Reißer-Mahla. In a second step, the class is supposed to adapt the speech by enriching it with historical background knowledge. There is a lot for the students to do: Many passages of the AI speech see medinterchangeable, summarize the students of the advanced history course.
Headmaster: Strict ban makes no sense
The school is a pioneer in the use of chatbots. Around Christmas,teacher Reißer-Mahla discussed the program with the students in class, she says, because it was clear that digital innovation was spreading among the many ways. With younger students in particular, there is a risk that they could”switch off their own thinking” and simply adopt content.
How exactly the school will deal with the opportunities and risks has been discussed for two months, says headteacher Christian Bayer. But it is clear that a strict ban makes no sense. “We have to adapt,” he says.
The mood in the class about ChatGPT is still different, but some, like the teacher, see potential for teaching. Copying homework from AI is pointless, says one student: “The teachers know how I write.” Another adds: “I find it interesting to see where artificial intelligence has its limits and where you can use your own human knowledge.” One student sumsit up in a seemingly contradictory way: “I find it frightening how manyways it can help you.”
ChatGPT is considered to be extremely advanced
Since ChatGPT was released to the public last November, the application has sparked a hype. At its core, ChatGPT is a chatbot based on machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence. It was trained with huge amounts of text to be able to respond like a human conversation partner. In the field of voice-based applications, the AI of the billion-dollar companyOpenAI is considered to be enormously advanced.
The consequences for schools have been discussed for several days. This means that they are also a topic for the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK), in which the education ministers of the federal states coordinate. A ban on ChatGPT would be difficult to monitor and enforce, says Berlin’s Senator for Education and KMK Chairwoman Astrid-Sabine Busse: “How do you want to control which sources students use for homework? School has always been a learning system. And that must and will also be evident in the new normal of a digitally influenced world in which AI is playing an increasing role.” The phenomenon must be addressed in lessons and at the same time critically questioned.
“This has elements of a revolution”
ChatGPT is not only likely to change school lessons.”It has elements of a revolution,” says Doris Weßels, Professor of Business Information Systems at Kiel University of Applied Sciences. Weßels’research focuses on the consequences of artificial intelligence in education, among other things. “The entire writing process, not just in schools, will change thanks to powerful tools like ChatGPT.”
The chatbot can primarily serve as a source of inspiration,as a writing partner that stimulates creativity, as Weßels describes. In class,this would mean students and AI working in tandem, so to speak. However, users should check the veracity of the statements generated by ChatGPT, because the bot “hallucinates” and therefore also writes fictitious statements in its answers. Factual knowledge therefore remains important: “Students and teachers can look at the generated texts as a kind of assessor and evaluate the content,” says Weßels. In a similar way to what the advanced course in Frankenthal already does.
Artificial intelligence also has its limits
Like KMK President Busse, Weßels is also in favor of schools integrating applications such as ChatGPT into lessons, depending on the age group. The bot has made it clear once again that the mere reproduction of knowledge – in other words, learning by heart and then forgetting it again – is outdated in the field of education. But of course the change brought about by artificial intelligence also has its limits, says Weßels: “When dealing with ChatGPT, it becomes clear that our intuition, i.e. a feeling based on our life experience, is a great treasure that we humans must be aware of. AI can never take that away from us.”
At the Karolinen-Gymnasium in Frankenthal, teachers and students also recognize the limits of AI. Headmaster Bayer sums it up in an anecdote: In December, he asked ChatGPT to write a Christmas card for the school. The result was a good text about the difficulties faced by educational institutions during the Corona pandemic. The bot was then asked to write a graduation speech for the high school. “Thank God, it was really bad,” says Bayer. Impersonal and flat. After all, the bot has no life experience.
Ever since ChatGPT was launched, it has been seen as a sign of trouble for writers, programmers, and search engines. However, no concept’s vanishing has been more loudly promoted than the simple student essay. The chatbot’s fast responses on topics like Jane Austen and the Krebs Cycle have made educators worry about the future of text-based evaluations.
Professors have started sounding the alarm for written assignments, universities are updating tests to prevent students from using the chatbot, and even Elon Musk has proclaimed the end of homework. It seems that there is an assumption that ChatGPT’s clever discussions, in the hands of cheaters, pose a threat of unearned high grades.
However, university professors are catching ChatGPT-generated assignments for a different reason: the AI-produced essays are poor in quality.
Darren Hicks, an assistant professor of philosophy at Furman University, noted that the first sign he was dealing with AI was that, despite the essay’s grammatical coherence, it didn’t make sense. Another professor, who preferred to remain anonymous, also suspected ChatGPT’s involvement because the essay on the work of Judith Butler was simply nonsensical.
Educators are realizing that it’s the unique ways in which ChatGPT is messing up assignments that are starting to give it away. They are beginning to share their early experiences and tips on how to spot the influence of ChatGPT.
Hicks mentioned that with traditional plagiarism, students’ essays are usually terrible due to last-minute panic, but it’s different with ChatGPT. According to him, a ChatGPT essay may be incorrect, but it is confident and well-written, which is a strange combination of warning signs he has never seen before.
There are also distinct stylistic cues. According to Bret Devereaux, a visiting history lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, essays from ChatGPT tend to be filled with bland, common wisdom platitudes, making them sound like a mishmash of ideas. This is unlike ordering a good meal at a restaurant; instead, it’s like ordering the entire menu, blending it into soup, and the result doesn’t taste good.
Another crucial point is that ChatGPT tends to fabricate information. It often creates entirely imagined works by fictional authors and merges the names of less famous scholars with more prolific ones. The challenge is that identifying these fabrications requires subject matter expertise, making it difficult for a panicked student using the software at the last minute to discern inaccuracies.
Unlike traditional plagiarism detection software, ChatGPT does not reproduce content verbatim from its training data, making it harder to detect. However, some phrases in a ChatGPT-generated essay were easily traced back to its probable online sources, as reported by an anonymous professor.
All these peculiarities stem from how ChatGPT operates. The OpenAI tool has absorbed extensive language datasets and learned the probabilistic associations between words, along with reinforcement learning from humans. It can create sentences that sound correct without understanding the underlying concepts.
In a recent article in the New Yorker, sci-fi author Ted Chiang likened ChatGPT to a “blurry JPEG of the internet.” While it has impressively transformed vast amounts of data into an algorithmic black box, it has also sacrificed specificity, nuance, and accuracy. When given a prompt, the result is a rough approximation of the internet’s collective knowledge.
This, along with the fact that ChatGPT is unable to recognize its own knowledge limitations, indicates that the tool is a sophisticated deceiver. In areas where it lacks information, it fills the gaps with articulate but loosely related content. In some cases, it even creates fictional content, generating seemingly logical but imaginative ideas.
Behind all this, the question of what could have been is present. It’s possible that some students are submitting ChatGPT-generated essays that are so impressive that they are going unnoticed by professors.
Notably, there is a group of professors strangely dedicated to endorsing the technology’s accomplishments over their own assignments. However, it seems that without significant adjustments from the student, this is unlikely to be the case in most instances.
At present, “I don’t think it’s good enough to write a college level paper,” stated Kristin Merrilees, a student at Barnard College. Although she has heard of students using ChatGPT for brief and relatively straightforward worksheet exercises, she is not aware of anyone attempting a full-length essay so far. Merrilees has used the software to help summarize material on a specific topic as a study aid, although it “sometimes gets things wrong.”
While the model is expected to progress, there are still unresolved issues. AI experts indicate that, currently, researchers are not certain how to enhance the model’s factual reliability or its awareness of its own limitations. “Grounding large language models is a lofty goal and something we have barely begun to scratch the surface of,” explained Swabha Swayamdipta, assistant professor of Computer Science in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
To enhance the dependability of tools like ChatGPT, companies may include more human reinforcement learning, but this could also “make the models tamer and more predictable, pushing them towards being blander and having a more recognizable style,” as stated by Jaime Sevilla, director of Epoch, an AI research and forecasting firm. The difference in results can be seen when comparing ChatGPT with its more eccentric counterpart, GPT-3, he points out.
Professors are still wrestling with the question of what they should do about ChatGPT, if anything. However, early evidence of ChatGPT-assisted cheating suggests a potential framework for making essay prompts less susceptible to manipulation. Questions focusing on describing or explaining topics that have substantial online content are well within ChatGPT’s capabilities. For example, questions like ‘discuss the major themes of Hamlet’ are widely available online and can be easily handled by ChatGPT, as Hicks noted.
If professors want to address these types of texts, they may need to devise more innovative questions. Being more specific is one potential approach: “ChatGPT has flawlessly read its library once and then burned the library,” remarked Devereaux. “It’s going to struggle to produce specific quotations unless they’re so common in the training material that they dominate the algorithm.”
Some professors assert that because their assessments require critical thinking and evidence of learning, they are beyond ChatGPT’s capabilities. “I’ve seen reports about ChatGPT passing this exam at this or that business school,” said Devereaux. “If ChatGPT can pass your exam, there’s probably something wrong with your exam.”
However, one viewpoint suggests that disruption related to ChatGPT is inevitable; educators must concede, overtaken by the AI interface.
Ethan Mollick, associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, communicated to students that he anticipates them to utilize ChatGPT for their assignments and that this won’t be considered cheating as long as they acknowledge its contribution. He and others have begun having students analyze ChatGPT-generated essays as part of the curriculum.
Some professors I spoke to believed that having students scrutinize ChatGPT’s output could present an innovative approach to the technology, while others were apprehensive that this could bypass students’ actual acquisition of essay writing skills and the critical thinking and analysis integral to the process.
“An essay in this sense is a word-box that we put thoughts in so that we can give those thoughts to someone else,” Devereaux authored in a blog about ChatGPT. “But ChatGPT cannot have original thoughts, it can only recycle content from its training material; it can only poorly imitate writing that someone else has already done better somewhere else.”
Hicks has threatened any student suspected of using ChatGPT with an on-the-spot oral test. (Bad news for students who just happen to be as bland and cocky as ChatGPT.)
Devereaux expressed bewilderment regarding the release of ChatGPT. Given the inundation of AI-generated content already permeating the internet, he questions whether its value will ultimately be positive.
“I have a deep understanding of various technologies as a military historian. I’m aware of the potential dangers associated with these technologies, such as the detonation of 2,000 nuclear weapons causing a nuclear winter, which we must avoid.”
The topic of AI in education is causing division in staffrooms globally. The question arises whether AI is a tool for personalized learning or simply a shortcut for students.
In my workplace in Spain, the staffroom discussions on AI in education are similar to those in many other places. I conducted a simple experiment to shed light on the matter. This experiment showed that there is truth in both perspectives.
I believe that acknowledging and embracing these contrasting views, while recognizing that educators have the ability to make use of both, is vital for encouraging wider acceptance among teachers.
Experiment:
I asked my sixth form students to write a complex essay on trade blocks, a topic we hadn’t covered. They were allowed to use their textbooks, the internet, and ChatGPT in the computer room, but were not allowed to discuss with peers or seek my help.
To add a twist, I gave half of the class comprehensive “ChatGPT Prompt” booklets. (Prompt engineering involves creating questions for AI systems like ChatGPT to get the best responses in the shortest time by understanding how the AI processes data.) The other half were only told to “Chat with ChatGPT.”
The students had one hour to complete the task. After they finished, they printed their essays anonymously. I collected the submissions with the aim of determining the authors based on their writing styles alone.
Results:
The group with the prompts completed their essays efficiently, some finishing in as little as 20 minutes. Their essays were uniform and lacked personal elements, making it impossible to identify the authors. Despite occasional errors, their essays were of good quality and deserving of high grades.
Conversely, the group without additional materials initially struggled but engaged more deeply with ChatGPT. Their essays were distinct and creative, reflecting the individual styles of the writers, allowing me to identify most of them. The quality varied, with some students producing below-average work while others excelled. All, however, were able to defend their conclusions.
Implications:
Effective use of prompt engineering enhances efficiency but not necessarily comprehension. Engaging in a two-way dialogue with ChatGPT, although less efficient, deepens understanding and leads to more effective, high-quality outcomes, provided that the user possesses strong critical thinking skills. This distinction between efficiency and effectiveness is a complex and widely debated issue in business and now deserves similar attention in education.
Teaching AI for Efficiency:
It’s a common concern among teachers that students are utilizing AI to submit work without a deep understanding, yet achieving surprisingly good results. While skepticism is natural, we should consider a more nuanced approach. In a rapidly evolving job market, students who fail to utilize AI for efficiency will be at a disadvantage. Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay, and it is our responsibility to prepare students for it.
Teaching AI for Effectiveness:
In my opinion, this is a lesser-known but crucial matter for teachers to embrace. AI can act as a personalized teaching assistant, enhancing learning experiences and developing students’ analytical abilities. AI’s potential in addressing Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem is considerable, bringing us closer than ever to personalized and more effective education for all. It truly has the capability to enhance human intelligence.
Who Will Teach It?:
Addressing who will teach AI in schools necessitates a shift in the current discourse. The AI consulting industry has experienced a rapid increase and is highly profitable. However, it is worth noting that these “experts” now have a vested interest in maintaining AI’s complexity to safeguard their lucrative market.
For instance, the terminology used, such as “prompting” instead of “chatting” and “hallucinations” instead of errors, although technically accurate, creates unnecessary hindrances and hinders broader acceptance among less tech-savvy educators. Yet, AI’s true value lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness. This is precisely why OpenAI has named it ChatGPT rather than PromptGPT.
“The true value of AI lies in its simplicity and ease of use.”
It is essential to advocate for this message in order to increase educators’ acceptance of AI. You may be an apprehensive humanities teacher who is concerned about finding the time to complete the latest expensive online course on AI technology mandated by your school.
However, you might find that your skills in critical thinking and communication actually position you better than most for effectively using AI – possibly even more so than the course’s instructor.
ChatGPT is one of the most talked-about technologies at present.
In addition to other generative AI models, it is anticipated to have a significant impact on the world. In academia, students and professors are getting ready for the ways that ChatGPT will influence education, particularly its effects on a crucial element of any course: the academic essay.
Students can utilize ChatGPT to produce complete essays from a few simple prompts. But can AI truly generate high-quality work, or is the technology not yet capable of delivering on its promise? Students may also be wondering if they should use AI to write their essays and what they might be missing out on if they did.
AI is here to stay, and its impact can either be beneficial or detrimental depending on how it is utilized. Read further to become more informed about what ChatGPT can and cannot do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the advantages of writing your own essays.
What is Generative AI?
Artificial intelligence is not a recent invention. Starting in the 1950s, computer scientists began programming computers to solve problems and comprehend spoken language. AI’s capabilities expanded as computer speeds increased, and today we use AI for tasks such as data analysis, identifying patterns, and offering insights on collected data.
But why the sudden interest in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes beyond data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It achieves this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, about a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it identifies in the original data.
It’s similar to the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text suggests what should come next based on data from past conversations. Likewise, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.
But is generative AI as groundbreaking as people believe, or is it lacking true intelligence?
The Limitations of Generative AI
It seems straightforward. You’ve been given an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and request it to compose a five-paragraph academic essay on the assigned topic. You wait a few seconds and it produces the essay for you!
However, ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect. Be conscious of the drawbacks of relying on ChatGPT to complete your assignments.
It’s not intelligence, it’s statistical analysis
One common misconception about AI is that it possesses a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually based on statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it identifies in existing data and work.
It “hallucinates”
Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even provides a warning on its homepage, stating that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data or because it lacks the ability to verify what it generates.
It doesn’t conduct research
If you request ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they may be inaccurate or even fabricated.
This is because AI lacks the ability to search for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — although it likely may not be.
There are privacy concerns regarding data
When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it?
Using ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application.
JPMorgan has restricted the use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”
It’s crucial to be conscious of these problems and take measures to ensure that you’re using the technology in a responsible and ethical manner.
It avoids the issue of plagiarism
AI generates content by utilizing a vast repository of existing information, but is it committing plagiarism? Could there be cases where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and incorporates it into your own work without proper citation? Educational institutions today are grappling with the question of what constitutes plagiarism when it comes to AI-generated content.
To illustrate this, a professor at Elon University assigned his class a task: request ChatGPT to write an essay and then evaluate it themselves.
“Many students were surprised and upset to learn that the AI could produce false information,” he notes, mentioning that he anticipated some essays to have mistakes, but all of them did.
His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had introduced AI technology without ensuring that the general public understands its limitations” and were worried about how many people embraced such a flawed tool.
How to Utilize AI as a Resource to Enhance Your Work
As more students are finding out, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as sophisticated or intelligent as they might think. While AI may not be a suitable choice for composing your essay, it can serve as a valuable tool to support your work.
Generate essay ideas
Use ChatGPT to help you brainstorm ideas for essays. For instance, provide specific prompts such as “Please suggest five ideas for essays on topics related to WWII,” or “Please propose five essay ideas comparing characters in twentieth-century novels.” Then, use these suggestions as a starting point for your original research.
Generate outlines
You can also enlist ChatGPT’s assistance in creating an essay outline. Ask it, “Could you draft an outline for a five-paragraph essay based on the following topic,” and it will craft an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. After that, you can expand on the outline with your own research and original ideas.
Generate essay titles
Crafting compelling titles for your essays is often challenging. Let ChatGPT assist you by prompting it with, “Can you propose five titles that would be suitable for a college essay about [topic]?”
The Advantages of Crafting Your Essays Independently
Seeking a robot’s help to write your essays may seem like a convenient shortcut for academic success or saving time on assignments. However, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can not only affect your grades negatively but also hinder your ability to think critically and communicate effectively. It’s always best to write your essays on your own.
Formulate your own ideas
Composing an essay by yourself means that you are formulating your own thoughts, viewpoints, and inquiries about the subject matter, and then examining, substantiating, and defending those thoughts.
Once you finish your education and embark on your career, projects will not just be about achieving good grades or completing tasks but could potentially impact the organization you work for—or even society at large. Being able to think independently is crucial for effecting change rather than merely ticking off tasks from your to-do list.
Establishing a basis of original thinking and ideas now will aid you in charting your own unique career path in the future.
Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills
In order to test or scrutinize your viewpoints or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to formulate the argument you wish to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills are not only essential in academia but are also skills you will apply throughout your professional career and personal life.
Enhance your research skills
Composing your own essays will train you in the art of conducting research, including where to locate sources, how to assess their credibility, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to conduct research is another crucial skill required in a wide range of professional fields.
Learn to be an effective communicator
Writing an essay involves effectively conveying an idea to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and presenting a conclusion that challenges them to consider the subject in a new light. Clear and compelling communication is indispensable in any industry.
Being affected by what you’re studying: Engaging with the subject, conducting personal research, and developing original arguments enables you to genuinely comprehend a topic you may not have previously encountered. A simple essay task centered on a piece of literature, historical era, or scientific study might ignite a passion that could potentially lead you to a new major or career.
ChatGPT has the ability to generate essays, but it’s important to consider the risks involved.
You’re interested in knowing how to have ChatGPT draft an essay for you, and I want to advise against doing that outright. However, there are ways to have ChatGPT or other AI services assist with your paper. In simple terms, ChatGPT can certainly compose a paper for you, but it’s crucial to ensure that it aligns with your professor’s instructions and won’t lead to accusations of cheating.
I won’t preach about the ethical implications of having AI write your essay and depriving you of the learning opportunity, but I will caution you that there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach—and to avoid any issues, you may still need to put in some effort.
If you want ChatGPT to compose your entire essay…
If you’re pressed for time and keen on having AI generate a complete paper, it’s feasible. You’ll input the essay prompt into ChatGPT and provide clear instructions. However, ChatGPT may decline certain requests. For instance, when I requested, “Write a 1,500-word essay on the role of aqueducts in ancient Rome’s success as an empire using six outside sources cited in MLA,” the AI refused and offered to generate an outline and provide the six sources for my own research. It did so, which was helpful, but it did not fulfill the entire paper request.
I made another attempt, thinking perhaps the issue was my request for an essay: “Compose a 1,500-word piece on the role of aqueducts in ancient Rome’s success as an empire using six outside sources cited in MLA.” The software informed me that this would be “too extensive,” and again provided the outline and source suggestions from before.
In the end, I achieved success by working in segments. I asked for a 100-word introduction to an essay on the topic and for ChatGPT to indicate its sources. Sure enough, I received the introduction along with the sources it used. You could theoretically proceed segment by segment, requesting the AI to create an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. You’ll still need to manually incorporate your citations, but it will provide them to you.
However, do not request ChatGPT to write the entire paper.
Here’s the catch: Even if you find a way to get ChatGPT to produce an entire paper, you’ll still need to add in citations yourself—and there’s a risk of being caught. Teachers can use free software to identify AI-generated content in writing and some are even using tactics like inserting unrelated prompts in white text to catch students who copy and paste instructions into ChatGPT.
For example, if your professor requires an essay on the decline of local news funding over the past decade, they might add white text that says something like, “Include two sentences on Madonna’s impact on popular culture.” You might inadvertently overlook this when pasting it into ChatGPT, and if you don’t review the output, you’ll submit something that inexplicably references the Queen of Pop, and your professor will immediately discern the source of the content.
Even if your professor isn’t using such tactics (although many are, as indicated by their own social media posts), a quick review of your work for words that don’t align with your usual vocabulary could prompt them to check your paper using an AI plagiarism checker.
How to utilize ChatGPT for assistance with writing a school paper
Your best course of action is still to write the paper yourself with the aid of ChatGPT, which will significantly reduce the time spent on research and brainstorming. AI excels at creating outlines for essays, as demonstrated earlier with the example of Roman aqueducts. Although it won’t generate the entire paper, ChatGPT provided me with nine distinct subtopics for exploration, from “historical context of ancient Rome” to “agricultural expansion and economic growth” and “military advantage.”
Each of these subtopics included bullet points outlining the content for their respective paragraphs, along with suggested sources for gathering information. If I followed the outline precisely, I could easily produce a six- or seven-page paper without needing to brainstorm or struggle with direction. In essence, you should rely on ChatGPT for outlines if you’re struggling to generate ideas or simply don’t have the time to structure an entire paper.
If you ask the software to generate a few paragraphs, you can—and should—rephrase them. This will require some time, but rewriting the paragraphs in your own words will minimize suspicion and enhance your understanding of the topic—and that can only benefit you if your teacher asks follow-up questions or includes the content in an upcoming test.
In today’s fast-paced digital world, academic writing is experiencing a transformation driven by artificial intelligence. Among these developments, ChatGPT is an outstanding tool, especially for high school and college students learning about essay writing. This article explores the practical aspects of using ChatGPT, guiding you through a digital support system for your academic pursuits. We will examine how this technology not only simplifies the essay writing process but also encourages creativity and efficiency, while emphasizing the importance of maintaining academic integrity and personal voice.
Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is more than just a writing tool; it resembles having a personal tutor at your disposal. It is built on natural language processing, allowing it to understand and respond to a wide range of textual queries and prompts.
For students, this means receiving support on almost any topic, from creating thesis statements to generating ideas for body paragraphs. The flexibility of ChatGPT lies in its adaptability – whether you are working on a complex argumentative essay or a simple narrative piece, the AI can adjust its support to suit your specific needs.
The advantage for students is twofold: it reduces the time and stress involved in the initial stages of writing, and it also serves as a learning tool, providing insights into structuring arguments and presenting ideas clearly.
Tips for Enhancing Essay Quality using ChatGPT
1. Start with a Detailed Prompt: The effectiveness of ChatGPT depends largely on how you communicate your requirements. Begin by crafting a detailed prompt, specifying your essay’s topic, outlining the required structure (e.g., five-paragraph format), and mentioning any key points or arguments you want to include.
2. Review and Improve the Initial Draft: ChatGPT’s first response is just a starting point. Carefully read through it and assess its relevance and quality. Does it align with your prompt? Are the arguments sound and well-structured? Use this evaluation to further refine your essay.
3. Interactive Refinement: Do not hesitate to interact with ChatGPT. If a paragraph does not quite meet your requirements, ask for a revision or a different perspective on the topic. This iterative process not only improves the quality of your essay but also deepens your engagement with the subject matter. Experiment with asking ChatGPT to expand or rephrase certain sections of the essay by changing the tone, writing style, etc. There are nearly endless ways to manipulate the text using natural language.
Plagiarism Checkers and AI-Generated Essays: What to Keep in Mind
The integration of AI in essay writing sparks an important conversation about plagiarism. While ChatGPT can generate informative and coherent content, it is essential to remember that this content should serve as a starting point, not the final product. Here are guidelines for responsibly incorporating AI assistance:
Understanding and Paraphrasing: When ChatGPT provides a draft, it is crucial to fully understand it and rewrite the content in your own words. This practice not only ensures originality but also deepens your understanding of the subject matter.
Citing Sources: If your essay requires citing sources, and ChatGPT provides specific information, facts, or data, be sure to verify and cite these sources correctly in your essay. This adds credibility to your work and avoids accidental plagiarism.
Checking for Uniqueness: Use plagiarism checkers to ensure that the paraphrased content is unique. While no tool can guarantee detection of AI-generated text, these checks help maintain academic integrity.
Personalizing Your Essay: Leveraging ChatGPT Plus for a Personal Touch
Personalization is crucial in distinguishing your essay. With ChatGPT Plus, the ability to upload and use samples of your previous writing is a game-changer. This feature enables the AI to analyze your writing style, including sentence structure, tone, and word choice, thereby generating content that reflects your unique writing style. Here’s how to get the most out of this feature:
Provide Clear Examples: When using ChatGPT Plus, upload several samples of your writing. The more varied and comprehensive these samples are, the better ChatGPT can adapt to your style.
Guidance and Customization: After providing your writing samples, guide ChatGPT on the specific aspects of your style you want to be incorporated in the essay. For instance, if you prefer concise sentences or a particular narrative tone, make that clear.
Blend AI with Personal Insight: When you receive the AI-generated draft, do not stop there. Add your personal insights, opinions, and experiences. This not only makes the essay uniquely yours but also significantly reduces the likelihood of detection by plagiarism tools.
Combine AI with Personal Insight: When you receive the AI-generated draft, don’t just end there. Incorporate your personal viewpoints, thoughts, and experiences. This not only adds a unique touch to the essay but also significantly reduces the risk of being flagged by plagiarism checkers.
Innovative Methods for Elevating AI-Assisted Essays
Even with the help of AI, outstanding essays showcase a dose of personal inventiveness and a profound connection with the subject. Here are some approaches to enhance the quality and originality of your AI-assisted essay:
Inject Creativity: Introduce metaphors, anecdotes, or thought-provoking questions to make your essay more captivating and memorable.
Critical Analysis and Thinking: Utilize the AI-generated material as a foundation for your analysis. Question the presented ideas, include your perspective, or establish links to broader concepts and real-life instances.
Feedback and Editing: Don’t hesitate to ask for feedback from peers or educators. Use their insights to further polish and enhance your essay. Keep in mind that revising is a crucial aspect of the writing process, even with AI-generated content.
Maintaining Personal Expression in AI-Generated Essays
As we welcome the innovative era of AI-supported writing, it’s essential to approach this technology with a blend of enthusiasm and contemplation. Even though ChatGPT is a robust assistant in essay composition, it should be ethically seen as a tool to complement your intellectual abilities , not substitute them. The key is to use this technology to ignite your ideas, stimulate creativity, and explore new perspectives.
Remember, the genuine value of an essay lies in its capacity to mirror your comprehension, logic, and personal voice. AI tools like ChatGPT can provide the foundation, but the core of your essay should always be distinctively yours. By incorporating AI-generated content with your insights and staying true to originality, you can confidently and ethically navigate the realm of academic writing.
ChatGPT provides a thrilling opportunity for students to enhance their writing competencies and productivity. Nevertheless, effectively blending this tool into your academic regimen demands a balance of technological reliance and personal input. Embrace the potentials presented by ChatGPT, but ensure always that your essays truly represent your thoughts, ideas, and academic integrity. By doing so, you’ll not only thrive in your academic pursuits but also evolve as a discerning thinker and writer in the digital era.
After its explosive debut last week, the chatbot ChatGPT was praised online by some as a significant advancement for artificial intelligence and a glimpse into the future of internet searching.
However, along with the acclaim came worries about its potential impact on academic environments. Could the chatbot, which delivers coherent, quirky, and conversational answers to straightforward queries, motivate more students to engage in dishonest practices?
For years, students have had access to the internet to cheat on assignments, leading to the creation of tools designed to verify the originality of their work. But the current concern is that ChatGPT might make those resources ineffective.
Some individuals online have already tested the ability of the bot to complete assignments. “Wow, solved my computer networks assignment using ChatGPT,” tweeted one person, who later clarified that the assignment was not recent. Others speculated that its introduction could signal the end of the college essay. One technology expert went so far as to suggest that with ChatGPT, “College as we know it will cease to exist.”
The artificial intelligence organization OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, did not respond promptly to a request for comment about concerns regarding cheating.
Nevertheless, various experts in the fields of AI and humanities stated that while the chatbot is impressive, they do not feel alarmed about potential widespread cheating among students just yet.
“We’re not there, but we’re also not that far away,” remarked Andrew Piper, a professor specializing in language, literatures, culture, and AI storytelling at McGill University. “We’re definitely not at a point where it can just produce student essays that no one can distinguish from authentic work.”
Piper and other professionals interviewed by NBC News compared the anxiety surrounding cheating with ChatGPT to fears that emerged when calculators were invented, with many believing it would mark the end of learning math by humans.
Lauren Klein, an associate professor in the Departments of English and Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University, even likened the concern to the philosopher Plato’s apprehensions about writing eroding human memory.
“There has always been anxiety that technologies will eliminate what people excel at, but in reality, people have adapted to utilize these technologies to enhance their strengths,” Klein commented.
Piper pointed out that educational institutions will need to think creatively and find ways to incorporate new technologies like ChatGPT into their curricula, much like they did during the calculator revolution.
In reality, according to Paul Fyfe, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, AI tools like ChatGPT could be leveraged to enrich the educational experience.
He emphasized the importance of discussing this topic now and involving students in the dialogue. “Instead of immediately trying to regulate what seems strange and scary, we should explore it,” Fyfe stated.
Some educators are already welcoming AI solutions in their classrooms.
Piper mentioned that he runs .txtlab, a research lab focused on artificial intelligence and storytelling, where he has had students assess AI-generated writing and often find they can distinguish between machine-produced and human-written papers.
Regarding educators worried about the rise of AI, Fyfe and Piper noted that this technology is already integrated into many aspects of education.
Existing tools like Grammarly and Google Doc’s Smart Compose assist with writing and have long been utilized by many students. Platforms like Grammarly and Chegg also provide plagiarism detection tools, enabling both students and educators to determine if an essay has been borrowed, wholly or partially, from another source. A representative from Grammarly did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for Chegg declined to provide input.
Those interviewed by NBC News indicated that they are unaware of any technology capable of detecting AI-authored essays, but they anticipate that someone will soon create such a tool.
Currently, Piper suggested that the most effective strategy against AI-generated essays is for teachers to become familiar with their students’ writing styles to identify any inconsistencies in their submissions.
If AI reaches a point where it can fulfill all the criteria of academic assignments and students start using that technology to breeze through college, Piper cautioned that this could severely undermine their education.
For the time being, he proposed that a more traditional technology might help alleviate concerns regarding students’ utilization of ChatGPT for dishonest purposes.
“It will revive the appreciation for pen and paper,” he remarked.
Researchers have discovered distinctive indicators that suggest students have utilized AI assistance for their essay writing.
A frequent use of words with Latin origins, unnecessary wording, and consistent application of the Oxford comma are among the signs that indicate the involvement of a generative chatbot in completing academic assignments, according to the researchers’ findings.
While the students involved in the study acknowledged some benefits of using AI, they recognized that complete dependence on it would likely lead to subpar work.
The influence of generative AI on education has been a concern for educators since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT—a text-generating chatbot—in November 2022.
Some view AI as a potentially revolutionary technology that could make education more inclusive and personalized, while others feel it undermines the credibility of coursework grades. Even professors are not exempt from the temptation to utilize AI to enhance their scholarship.
Researchers at Cambridge University have sought to pinpoint the attributes of AI writing style that could facilitate its detection.
Though their study had a limited scope, the researchers believe it could assist teachers in distinguishing between essays authored by students and those generated by AI.
Three undergraduate students participated in writing two essays each with the assistance of ChatGPT, which were then compared to essays on the same topics written by 164 high school students. The undergraduates were subsequently interviewed about their experiences with AI.
(Undergraduates were included in the study because ChatGPT requires users to be at least 18 years old).
On average, the essays created with ChatGPT received higher marks, especially in the categories of ‘information’ and ‘reflection’. Conversely, they scored lower in ‘analysis’ and ‘comparison’—variances that the researchers attribute to the strengths and weaknesses of the chatbot.
In terms of writing style, several characteristics made the AI-assisted essays easily identifiable.
The typical style of the AI reflects the bland, concise, and neutral tone common to generic online journalistic writing, as noted by the researchers, who pinpointed several key elements of ChatGPT-generated content:
- An elevated occurrence of words with Latin roots, especially multi-syllabic terms and a vocabulary level that exceeds expectations;
- Paragraphs that begin with specific transitional phrases like ‘however’, ‘moreover’, and ‘overall’, which are immediately followed by a comma;
- Organized lists, with each item introduced by a colon;
- Pleonasms: the inclusion of redundant phrases, such as ‘free gift’ or ‘true fact’;
- Tautology: restating the same idea in different words, such as ‘We must come together to unite’;
- Repetition of words or phrases;
- Steady usage of Oxford commas—a comma placed before ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a list, exemplified by “ChatGPT has many uses for teaching, learning at home, revision, and assessment.”
Although the students who participated in the trial employed ChatGPT to varying degrees, ranging from copying entire sections to using it for research prompts, there was general consensus on its effectiveness for swiftly gathering information, and that it could be integrated into essay development through targeted prompts on topics and essay frameworks.
Nevertheless, the students concurred that relying on AI to produce their essays would yield work of insufficient academic quality.
“Despite a small sample size, we are enthusiastic about our findings as they have the potential to benefit both teachers and students,” stated Jude Brady from Cambridge University Press and Assessment, the study’s lead researcher.
She suggested that future research should involve larger and more representative student samples. Learning to utilize and recognize generative AI is becoming an increasingly vital aspect of digital literacy, she mentioned.
“We hope our study may assist individuals in recognizing when a text has been generated by ChatGPT,” she concluded.
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