Our First-year Writing program began intentional student engagements with generative AI in the fall of 2022. We developed assignments for brainstorming research questions, writing counterarguments, and editing assistance using the AI tools Elicit, Fermat, and Wordtune. Students felt that the tools were helpful for finding ideas to get started with writing, to find sources once they had started writing, and to get help with counterarguments and alternate word choices. But when given the choice to use the assistants or not, most declined. Generative AI at this stage is unreliable, and many students found the tradeoff in reviewing AI suggestions to be too time consuming. And many students expressed a preference for continuing to develop their own voices through writing. Our experience in engaging AI led to the creation of the DEER praxis, which emphasizes defined engagements with AI tools for specific purposes, and generous use of reflection.

In this paper, you will analyze and critically evaluate the perspectives presented by Sarah Eaton and Maha Bali on the concept of a "post-plagiarism era" in academia. Reflect on the implications of digital technology on academic integrity and authorship, and articulate your own stance on these issues.

Note: The highlighted text in different colors below corresponds to your level of ChatGPT use recommended for each stage of your paper. Here is a color-coded guide for you to see what level of ChatGPT use is recommended for each stage of this paper. Please use this as a guide to determine your level of ChatGPT-use in each area. 

Red: It is better to accomplish independently

Yellow: With minimal help from ChatGPT

Green: With some help from ChatGPT

Summary from Harvard- Office of the VPAL:

Maria Dikcis teaches her students critical and analytical thinking by using ChatGPT. She has her students write a short essay and then ask ChatGPT to write the same essay based on a prompt. The students then write a brief paper analyzing the assignment and how ChatGPT wrote versus how they wrote the same essay. Dikcis finds that students often find flaws in others writing than their own, and that LLM miss nuances in writing. This assignment gives her students a newfound appreciation for human thought and human creativity.

The benefits of traditional peer-review are obvious: peer reviewers can offer advice on how to improve your draft, but they are also test readers: by soliciting their curiosity, questions, or even confusion, you will be better able to identify the elements of your draft that work as well as the areas that might need revision or rethinking.

Generative AI, like ChatGPT, can be recruited as a peer reviewer, but it can also do much more! The following four “mini-games” are meant to be played by traditional two-person peer-review partner groups as an alternative to the traditional “read and respond” model of peer review. Partners should read each other’s drafts and choose one of the mini-games below. Each game involves working with ChatGPT in a different way. All games conclude with some time for partners to reflect and discuss.

While AI that creates content may seem to undermine the work of writing educators and the advancements in written communication, we see a different future. We believe that properly harnessed, AI can enhance the writing process, making it more fluid, democratic, and inclusive.

Our vision is guided generative AI, which will free up writers’ time to focus on critical thinking skills, planning, and communicating substantive ideas. This approach will also address the cognitive and motivational barriers that have hindered the scaling of writing education.