In December 2022, when ChatGPT from Open AI burst into the space, Google Trends found the searches for “AI essay writing” jumped super high: 2,041% compared to the last five years. The reason was a report from The Guardian claiming that one-fifth of submitted college essays were AI-generated.
It shook the education niche.
While some experts saw AI text generators as a threat to academic integrity, others discussed the negative influence of such tools on students’ writing and communication skills.
Is this “devil” really as black as they paint it? Do AI tools bury or revolutionize the academic writing experience? Let’s get things straight.
The Challenges Academia Faces Because of AI
Teachers are skeptical, insisting that students trust AI tools for all writing tasks like essays, summaries, research papers, etc. While a tool creates generic and superficial texts, they are still original, thus more challenging to distinguish via plagiarism checkers.
Writing experts at https://www.customwritings.com confirm this fear of many teachers: 42% of students they work with say their schools don’t allow AI tools to prevent academic integrity violations. However, banning them is not the solution to the problem.
AI tools and services won’t go anywhere, and teachers can’t separate students from access to this technology.
Critical Thinking, Analytical Skills, and Creativity
Another concern is that the overuse of AI services may hurt writing and communication skills, lead to a critical thinking and creativity decline, and prevent students from developing their analytical skills. Also, overusing AI tools for academic needs may influence judgment:
Many trust information ChatGPT-like services provide, though AI tools aren’t accurate. Relying on AI, users don’t develop independent thinking and don’t learn to evaluate sources to use for academic references.
Mental Activity and Communication
Also, educators fear that students might compromise academic growth, ranking comfort over learning. There’s a risk they would focus more on the technical requirements of the task they get, giving up the depth and losing their unique writing voice:
Relying too much on a tool’s suggestions is about predictive texting rather than creativity. It’s what Evan Selinger discussed years ago when speaking about how technologies influence people’s interaction. He said they “reduced the power of writing as a form of mental activity” and could “stop us thinking.”
Experiencing academic writing with nothing but AI, students don’t learn to communicate. They miss practicing writing as a mental process, making their texts more algorithmic and less of themselves.
So, What’s the Solution?
Like it or not, AI technology is here; it won’t go anywhere. The education niche understands that:
Instead of blaming young academics for using it, they’ve recognized the opportunities AI brings for education. The approach to teaching writing skills changes; AI services enhance learning by organizing classroom conditions for students to explore AI features and experiment with them in the learning environment.
How AI Services Revolutionize Academic Writing
Discussing the powers and limitations of AI tools in academia, educators explain how to use these services for good. AI in classrooms and the learning process promotes critical thinking, creativity, and analysis rather than plagiarism and other academic integrity violations.
Advanced Writing Assignments
Given that AI tech isn’t efficient with deep analysis, educators redesign writing assignments: The focus is on critical thinking now, not a mere factual presentation.
Instead of defining terms and explaining general concepts in academic papers, students learn to apply specific details to specific situations and analyze their influence or consequences. They don’t write about common and overused topics now but focus on examining and evaluating their low-narrowed aspects.
Also, the academic writing experience is about current events, real-life stories, and individual research. Educators do that to prevent over-relying on the resources provided by AI services, which take the info from 1-2 years old data.
Result?
Academic research and papers become more original and based on deep analysis. Instead of writing about already-known online information, students and young academics think of it from a different perspective.
It leads to fresh discoveries or, at least, to a more substantive study of existing ones.
Revised Assessment System
The rise of AI tools makes the academic community rethink the purpose of writing assignments and, therefore, revise their assessments accordingly.
Academics don’t get grades for the technical aspects of their work anymore. While proper grammar, format, and citation style still matter, they are no longer determinative of the overall assessment. (We understand that AI tools can generate grammatically and stylistically correct text, so these details are not an advantage; they are a given now.)
More credit goes for the elements AI can’t produce: exclusive arguments, specific examples, unusual approaches to the issue, a student’s connection to the material, etc.
AI as Assistant, Not All-Inc Performer
AI tools are great assistants for doing monotonous work. They can save academic writers time on brainstorming topics, preliminary research, outlining, and proofreading their texts.
It’s not about full-time performing and doing all the job for a writer. It’s about using AI features to the maximum, enhancing our productivity.
Academic writers use AI tools to generate original essay topics, develop thesis statements and outlines, and craft reference lists. AI services are also powerful helpers with citation generation and checking drafts for grammar mistakes or accidental plagiarism.
Final Words
The above are starting points. Academics continue exploring AI tools and services for new methods to integrate them into the teaching, learning, and research process.
It’s an opportunity to update the education system and overall scholarly niche, worth embracing to enhance academic writing experiences.
