Can AI tools be used to support academic writing?

The rapid development of generative AI such as ChatGPT has sparked concerns around academic integrity and necessitated changes in how we deliver assessments. However, it also presents opportunities to enhance learning. We argue that as AI is easily accessible and here to stay, we should encourage its responsible use to improve the AI literacy of our students, especially given student concerns about their use1. Here, we share our experiences of trialling the use of AI to support academic writing on BI20B2 Physiology of Human Cells, a compulsory 2nd year undergraduate medical sciences course with 220 students.

We used ChatGPT to generate academic writing samples for both an online academic writing lesson on Lt and a face-to-face lab write-up tutorial. In the Lt lesson, 95% of students identified which introduction sections were written by AI and 96% rated the example written by an academic as being the strongest. Free-text comments included “Intro 1 [academic] was concise and explained the aims of the report. Introduction 2 [AI] was wordy and irrelevant”. During the tutorial, 86% identified which writing sample was generated by ChatGPT and rated it as lower quality compared with the one written by us (mean scores 2.41/5 vs. 3.81/5 respectively).

Following a discussion around responsible use and limitations, students were permitted to use AI tools to assist with their group lab reports. While only 3.7% (5/135) of submissions acknowledged the use of AI, all groups reported it was helpful. Most used ChatGPT to improve their grammar.

1) Johnston, H, Wells, RF, Shanks, EM, Boey, T, Parsons, BN. Student perspectives on the use of generative artificial intelligence technologies in higher education. International Journal for Educational Integrity. 2024;20(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-024-00149-4.