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ChatGPT: A Useful Tool for Students and Tutors? My Reflection
LikeHaving experimented a little with ChatGPT, this is my reflection on the essay-writing results that it produces. I also assess the extent to which ChatGPT could be used to replace the support provided by specialist study skills tutors.
It is argued that although ChatGPT may provide a useful starting point for students who are struggling to write an assignment, it cannot replace the thinking and academic skills needed to produce the quality of writing expected in a university-level assignment. As such, neither can it replace the expertise of a study techniques tutor. However, a study skills tutor could use an AI-generated essay to teach study skills, including critical thinking skills, referencing, paraphrasing, and the development of an academic register. The skills needed for effective essay-structuring, including those needed to write introductions and conclusions, could also be taught with reference to an AI-generated essay.
ChatGPT produces grammatically correct sentences, which dyslexic students and others who need support to write academically, could analyse and, in so doing, could use ChatGPT as a tool to learn how to write their own grammatically correct sentences. This is an activity that a specialist study skills support tutor could support the learner in doing.
Despite the fact that the writing produced by ChatGPT is grammatically correct, the writing tends to lack the criticality required of students in higher education. For example, in an essay I generated using Chat GPT, whilst we are told that the Beatles are ‘one of the most…influential bands in…history…’ we are not told why that is the case. Moreover, the phrase ‘various other genres’ is not specific and does not indicate exactly what musical genres the style of the Beatles encompasses. The essay also includes the bold claim that the music of the Beatles ‘played a pivotal role in the cultural revolution of the 1960s’; however, no contextual information in relation to the revolution, nor any indication of the ways in which the Beatles influenced culture of the 1960s, is provided. It would, therefore, be necessary for students to do sufficient research that would enable them to write with the required level of criticality, if they chose to use an AI-generated essay as the basis for their own. The skills required to conduct effective academic research are ones that a specialist study skills support tutor could teach, thus supporting students in taking ownership of a skeleton essay generated by ChatGPT.
In addition to lacking criticality, the AI-generated essay tends to lack academic rigor, failing to include academic citations. However, once I had generated one essay using ChatGPT, I used the same prompt to generate another and got a different result – one which included some limited references and some advice on how to do reference sources correctly. To write successful academic essays, therefore, students would need to ensure that they provided correctly formatted in-text citations and references, as dictated by the conventions adhered to in their disciplines. Students would also need to ensure that those references and citations were in relation to appropriate academic sources, all skills that a study skills tutor could support them in developing.
The diction used in a Chat GPT essay is also not always suitable for academic writing. For example, in the essay I generated, the word ‘catchy’ is used to describe the melodies of the Beatles. A specialist study skills support tutor may, therefore, need to spend time supporting students in using a thesaurus or other study aid, enabling them to find more appropriate alternatives for use in their own work.
I also think that it may be difficult for someone with underdeveloped writing skills to get the best out of ChatGPT. This is because, to do so, the user needs to write lengthy prompts. By the time they have planned the prompt they wish to use and have written it, they may have been able to do the writing task that they used ChatGPT to assist them with in the first place!
Whilst it would not be advisable for students to rely on ChatGPT to produce assignments, essays generated by the software could be used by specialist study skills support tutors to provide an example of an assignment, which could then be evaluated by both themselves and their student. For example, such writing could be used to support the student in identifying a lack of criticality in their own writing, and that of others. An AI-generated essay could also be used to demonstrate how to increase the level of criticality in writing, when and how in-text citations should be used, and how to develop introductions and conclusions. Using AI-generated essays to model essay-writing skills may be a particularly effective approach to take if students are uncomfortable with their own writing being critiqued.
Having investigated the capabilities of ChatGPT, I think of it as the Wikipedia method of essay-writing. If students are really struggling to know where to start with an assignment, I would probably advise them to use it if they really felt they needed to, but to never admit to it! I’m not sure that ChatGPT will ever be able to be used to produce a complete assignment that contains enough criticality and academic rigour to compete with one researched and written by a thoughtful university student. Will AI ever replace the need for specialist study skills support? I don’t think so. We may find our roles evolving as a result of it, maybe using the technology to model essay-writing skills, but the work of both us and our students is likely to always be better than that of AI.
If you´re a student who would like the help of a study skills specialist, feel free to reach out to me! I am a private tutor offering support in this area.
