The End of Writing as We Know It? A Descriptive Case Study ChatGPT Usage among College Students in Required Writing Seminars

The End of Writing as We Know It? A Descriptive Case Study ChatGPT Usage among College Students in Required Writing Seminars

Presenter(s)

Taylor Lee Baxter, Alexandra M. Dimarco, Grace Marie Pierucci, Toni Ann Selman, Skylar Barbara Sharkey, Patrick W. Thomas, Lucy Larkin Waskiewicz

Comments

Presentation: 2:00-2:40, Kennedy Union 331

Description

Recent uptake of Generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, has had considerable impact on students’ experiences learning to write. Unlike more quotidian assistive writing technologies, such as Grammarly or Google’s Smart Compose feature, the rise of ChatGPT marked a far more significant shift in how people produce writing. Both the cultural attention and the technical efficiency to GenAI technologies have lured students into daily use of tools like ChatGPT, and regardless of instructor knowledge, …. or it’s linguistic limitations, student use of ChatGPT continues apace.This presentation reports on a semester-long research project investigating students’ use of ChatGPT for the purpose of completing academic writing assignments. Focusing, for the sake of depth, on a few case examples, this study examines students’ ChatGPT use within required first- and second-year writing courses: arguably the very courses in which students are expected to learn how to write for the university. We explore questions about when and how students prompt ChatGPT for assistance in writing academic essays, the types of prompts that students compose, and the outputs that students’ prompts generate. Drawing on data from a survey, in-depth interviews, and tstudents’ ChatGPT prompts and subsequent ChatGPT output, we highlight findings that identify moments within the writing process that students engage with ChatGPT, as well as the kind of assistance they seek and the ways that they incorporate ChatGPT outputs into their writing. In doing so, we highlight implications for students in using ChatGPT for academic essay writing, professors in evaluating student writing that makes use of ChatGPT outputs, and universities in the process of developing policies regarding student use of ChatGPT in writing courses.

Publication Date

4-17-2024

Project Designation

Course Project - ENG 497 01

Primary Advisor

Patrick W. Thomas

Primary Advisor's Department

English

Keywords

Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

Institutional Learning Goals

Scholarship; Critical Evaluation of Our Times

The End of Writing as We Know It? A Descriptive Case Study ChatGPT Usage among College Students in Required Writing Seminars

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