Writing with Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT

Supplemental Writing Skills (SWS) courses at Grand Valley State University teach students advanced and discipline-specific writing, information literacy, and critical thinking skills to improve their personal, civic, and professional lives. In the last few years, the introduction of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have created interesting challenges and learning opportunities for students as they build their writing skills. In addition to whole language-generative AI, language-enhancing auto-correct AI tools are increasingly integrated into word processing software and search engines.

While the future of GenAI suggests there will be exciting opportunities and developments, currently some of what these tools create is inaccurate, biased, or disrespectful to the intellectual work from which they borrow. While AI can provide information to spark human thinking, relying too heavily on GenAI tools during the writing process may stifle your own creativity, identity-related dialect, and growth as a writer.

 

In SWS courses, you may not submit any text or parts of texts generated by an AI program as your own without noting and citing that use. Emphatically, you are not permitted to submit an entire paper/project that has been generated by AI tools for a grade. If your instructor is concerned that your work includes unexplained/uncited material from an AI tool, they will follow the procedure for addressing plagiarism as outlined in the university’s plagiarism policy.

 

If you use language-generative AI in an SWS writing course, you must follow the guidelines of acceptable use as your professor defines it.  Keep the following in mind:

• Use AI Critically and Cautiously: As a writer, you are ultimately responsible for what your text says and how it says it, including any inaccuracies, problematic language, or misrepresentations that an AI tool might generate. Remember that auto-correct generates many mistakes. We encourage you to:
  • Check the material that is generated carefully. Make sure that the facts are correct and up-to-date. 

• • Review the material to determine it does not contain (intentional and/or unintentional) bias. 

• • Ensure that you are not violating academic honesty guidelines outlined in the Student Code. 

• Limit Your Use of AI: It is important that your voice, ideas, and perspectives are clear in the work you do, so we encourage you to not rely on AI tools so much that your views get lost or you miss out on opportunities to develop your critical thinking skills. 

• Cite Interactions with AI: Interactions with ChatGPT or other forms of whole language-generative AI must be cited as a source in your essay/project. If you paraphrase or directly quote material generated through an interaction with ChatGPT or AI, that information must be signaled as a direct quote and listed on your works cited. Your instructor will provide you with guidelines for how to cite AI interactions correctly within their field. Some professors may require that the full text of prompt and response interactions with ChatGPT or other GenAI tools be attached as an Appendix to assignment submissions.  

 

Dr. Ellis' policy

 

For this class, responsible use of AI-based tools in completing coursework must be done in accordance with the following:

1. You must not use AI-based tools to compose work you submit as your own (by copying and pasting). An AI detector such as GPTZero (https://gptzero.me/) may be used to detect AI-driven work. 

2. You must be transparent in how you use the AI-based tool, clearly defining which work was influenced by your use of AI and how. If/When you use AI in your assignments, you will need to write a note at the end of your assignment to clarify where in your process you used AI, which platform or extension was used, how it was used, and distinguish parts of your work that were not influenced by the use of AI at all. Also, you must include as an Appendix at the end of your document ALL of the prompts and the output that AI provided (in ChatGPT, cut and paste into another doc or use the icon in the upper right corner to share a direct link to your chat output).

 

Here are some examples of ETHICAL / APPROPRIATE uses of AI for this course, as long as they are cited, explained, and documented: 

• Idea generation: Gathering information about the typical general understanding of a topic / brainstorming general points that could be expanded on in your own writing / refine a topic or argument  
  • Generate a list of potential research questions you could pursue about a specific topic that interests you (brainstorming)

• • Generate a list of ideas for potential methods that could be used to pursue a research question that interests you (brainstorming)

• • Input your draft of a thesis statement to further refine, narrow, or otherwise strengthen your topic. 

• • Comparing AI-generated responses with your own responses to prompts to help you revise and strengthen your work 

• • Compare your response to an opinion question for discussion preparation with an AI-generated output to better understand where along the debate your opinion aligns.     

• Comprehending, synthesizing, summarizing, or essentializing
  • Help get the gist of a complicated paragraph in a research article so that you can better synthesize or paraphrase the important information. 

• • Help provide the gist of a theory (or a famous author’s work) to inform your analysis. 

• Polishing your writing: rephrasing, enhancing grammar, organization, or clarity. Even spell-check and grammar-check are forms of Artificial Intelligence.  Word or phrase replacement software are now integrated into many processors.
  • Accept or reject AI suggestions thoughtfully to maintain your unique style and voice, while learning from the suggestions that the algorithms make about the conventions of academic prose. 

• • Help with proofreading by pasting a draft of your introduction (or longer work, paragraph by paragraph) into Chat-GPT, identifying its suggested revisions, and using your own discretion to accept and reject suggested edits in order to retain (and strengthen) your own voice. This assistance must be documented and explained in order to avoid plagiarism. Any prompts and output must be included as an Appendix at the end of your paper.

• • Help with proofreading using embedded spell- and grammar-check extensions like Grammarly if the writer makes thoughtful choices about which revisions to accept. Remember that auto-correct generates many mistakes and misunderstandings.

All of these uses must be explained, with prompt and response-type interactions saved and submitted as an Appendix.

 

Here are some examples of INAPPROPRIATE/UNETHICAL uses of AI in assignments in this course: 

• Directly copying from an AI generator without attribution

• Pasting the prompt to a homework task and then pasting the output response as my own to submit. 

• Relying on AI for drafting or outlining

• Following an outline for an assignment generated by AI directly without using my own discernment for what is most relevant for the context and purpose.  

• Replacing your voice with AI content from Grammarly or other language-enhancing programs, sentence by sentence

• Pasting a draft of your writing into AI, asking it to improve my clarity, and then pasting the output to use as my own without making careful judgements about which language interferes with my voice. 

• Plagiarizing ideas as your own 

• Translating essays from another language using AI and attributing the ideas as your own.