Generating ideas. Most students struggle to identify appropriate topics for their writing. Generative AI can offer ideas and provide feedback on students’ ideas.
Narrowing the scope of a topic. Most ideas start off too broad, and students often need help in narrowing the scope of writing projects. Instructors and peers already do that. Generative AI becomes just another voice in that process.
Researching. Some chatbots have access to the internet, combining search engines with generative AI. Specialty tools or plugins allow search of research-oriented databases. All have the potential to help students throughout the writing process.
Finding initial sources. Bing and Bard can help students find sources early in the writing process. Specialty tools like Semantic Scholar, Elicit, Prophy, and Dimensions can provide more focused searches, depending on the topic.
Finding connections among ideas. Research Rabbit, Aria (a plug-in for Zotero) and similar tools can create concept maps of literature, showing how ideas and research are connected. Elicit identifies patterns across papers and points to related research. ChatGPT Pro can also find patterns in written work. When used with a plugin, it can also create word clouds and other visualizations.
Gathering and formatting references. Software like EndNote and Zotero allow students to store and organize sources. They also save time by formatting sources in whatever style the writer needs.
Summarizing others’ work. ChatGPT, Bing and specialty AI tools like Elicit do a good job of summarizing research papers and webpages, helping students decide whether a source is worth additional time.
Interrogating research papers or websites. This is a new approach AI has made possible. An AI tool analyzes a paper (often a PDF) or a website. Then researchers can then ask questions about the content, ideas, approach, or other aspects of a work. Some tools can also provide additional sources related to a paper.
Analyzing data. Many of the same tools that can summarize digital writing can also create narratives from data, offering new ways of bringing data into written work.
Finding hidden patterns. Students can have an AI tool analyze their notes or ideas for research, asking it to identify patterns, connections, or structure they might not have seen on their own.
Outlining. ChatGPT, Bing and other tools do an excellent job of outlining potential articles or papers. That can help students organize their thoughts throughout the research and writing process. Each area of an outline provides another entry point for diving deeper into ideas and potential writing topics.
Creating an introduction. Many writers struggle with opening sentences or paragraphs. Generative AI can provide a draft of any part of a paper, giving students a boost as they bring their ideas together.
Creating drafts. Students might ask AI to draft an opening paragraph, an area where many writers struggle. They might ask for a draft of a section or even an entire paper. It is then up to them to edit, fact-check, and add their own voice and their own intellectual contributions to the writing. This is the function most faculty members worry about. They see this as avoiding the intellectual work of analyzing and synthesizing sources and creating original work. Some students will certainly do that. Others will use the AI drafts to motivate them, speed the writing process, and ultimately improve their work.
Thinking critically. Creating good prompts for generative AI involves considerable critical thinking. This isn’t a process of asking a single question and receiving perfectly written work. It involves trial and error, clarification and repeated follow-ups. Even after that, students will need to edit, add sources, and check the work for AI-generated fabrication or errors.
Creating titles or section headers for papers.This is an important but often overlooked part of the writing process, and the headings that generative AI produces can help students spot potential problems in focus.
Helping with transitions and endings. These are areas where students often struggle or get stuck, just as they do with openings.
Getting feedback on details. Students might ask an AI tool to provide advice on improving the structure, flow, grammar, and other elements of a paper.
Getting feedback on a draft. Instructors already provide feedback on drafts of assignments and often have students work with peers to do the same. Students may also seek the help of the writing center or friends. Generative AI can also provide feedback, helping students think through large and small elements of a paper. We don’t see that as a substitute for any other part of the writing process. Rather, it is an addition.
