Past weekend, I spent several hours interacting with Open AI's ChatGPT language model and thinking about how it affects us as a researcher.

Students and researchers may increasingly turn to AI tools to help make their academic writing easier and more efficient. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which delivers intelligent-sounding and well-written text much like a real human, has emerged as a powerful tool to help us, especially non-native English speakers, with the academic writing process.

Here’s a quick look at some ways we can use ChatGPT.

1. Creating a research paper outline

2. Writing research paper abstracts

3. Translating text in one language to another

4. Rewriting difficult passages of text

5. Summarizing long articles or documents

While ChatGPT is a powerful tool for research writing, there are some limitations we need to consider when using it.

ChatGPT is incapable of generating original ideas, it only creates text based on the patterns it sees in it's training data. This raises the risk of plagiarism as the AI-generated text may not include references or citations that is critical for research writing.

Note: Result of ChatGPT may also be incorrect, exceptionally. It has been reported that many publishers are banning the inclusion of ChatGPT as a co-author.

That said, Springer's Nature editor, Magdalena Skipper, told the Verge that despite not permitting ChatGPT to be an author, they are happy for it to be used in the preparation of articles, as long as there is transparency.

Hi there. ChatGPT is being demonized in the media. A colleague of mine (@Remy Decorte) convinced me that such tools do have a place in our pedagogical apparatus provided we take time to explore their values (and flaws) with students. This colleague argued that ChatGPT can facilitate the learning of metacognitive strategies. I for one think it can serve as a a good tool to help students learn about postedition for instance seeing as though the results you get from ChatGPT and other online tools (such as Deepl) can very seldom be copied and pasted without careful consideration to the forma and content.

AI tools like ChatGPT can be used pedagogically to support student academic writing development by providing them with examples of good writing, feedback on their own writing, and opportunities to practice and improve their skills. However, educators also need to rethink teaching and assessment methods to ensure that students do not misuse or rely too much on these tools, and that they develop critical thinking and creativity as well as writing skills

AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not. José Luis Gomez-Sirvent I agree that teaching / assessment practices need to evolve. In fact, I would think that teacher education should equip prospective teachers with the necessary skills to inlcude AI in their students' lerning as well as their own.

ChatGPT as a possibility At the University of Namur in Belgium, professors explicitly encourage students to create text with the tool in order to see where machine-generated text differs from what they have learned or their own writing. Partly, this gives learners the possibility of seeing the limits of these kinds of tools. One could make the argument that texts produced by artificial intelligence sum up what is already established knowledge and that these texts are well suited as points of departure for going beyond this with a critical approach (I have tried to imagine this use for improving policy-making.)...

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230222121538591

Education discussion forums and mainstream media alike are awash with posts expressing concerns about the potentially negative impact of ChatGPT on how we currently teach and assess students and the implications for academic integrity. While these are real concerns, we need to also consider its potential as a ‘transformer technology’ with the capability to multiply our current abilities by, say, improving writing and communication; perhaps, in the same way the calculator facilitated more accurate calculations, with real possibilities for supporting second-language students and those with communication and learning difficulties. In the current education environment, where students are often more focused on the collection of marks than on the process of learning itself, it is inevitable that those returning to class in 2023 will be turning to ChatGPT...

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230222112438466

Thank you all for taking the time and providing such informative and thought-provoking responses. I do agree with you that AI-generated writing tools have become a reality and their continuing advancement seems to outpace our current “conservative” thinking about and practices of academic writing in educational contexts. It is indeed apparent that AI-based writing tools have emerged as an inevitable reality and educators need to come to terms with such reality.

I do agree with your responses regarding the potential pedagogical applications of ChatGPT in educational contexts. There are of course several ways we can think of and whereby teachers can make use of such tools to develop student academic writing competence. One way, for instance, to do this is get students to compare their responses to a given writing prompt with the responses, to the same prompt, generated by ChatGPT. Given the lack of in-text citation in the ChatGPT-generated texts, teachers can run the generated texts in Turnitin or any other plagiarism detection software programmes and get students to analyse the similarity reports, and most importantly, get them to identify the sources from which the texts were synthesised. Students can then check out the identified sources and try to paraphrase the relevant bits of the texts taken from these sources and add both the relevant in-text citation and the full references.

Another potential area is by teaching paraphrasing using ChaGPT to help students produce effective academic writing. Students can be given the first attempt of the ChatGPT-generated texts and asked to paraphrase them in their own words. They can then be given the texts of the second and third attempts and asked to compare their paraphrased texts with these texts with the view of noticing and discovering any areas of further improvement. I believe such activities can generally help raise students' awareness about the good practices of academic writing, improve their summarising and paraphrasing skills for effective academic writing, while also fostering their noticing. autonomy, and critical thinking skills.

ChatGPT can instantly provide students with feedback on their writing, pinpointing areas for improvement such as grammar, vocabulary, and coherence. It can also generate writing prompts to help students practice writing in different genres and styles. Additionally, ChatGPT can assist students in researching and summarizing key information for their assignments, and provide suggestions for revision. Using ChatGPT for writing discussions and debates can also foster critical thinking skills.

Fine resource: AI Can Strengthen Student Writing, Not Weaken It by Perpetual Baffour

Given the high need for writing assessments and feedback, as well as the limited time and resources available to teachers, NLP tools like ChatGPT can be valuable assistants in the classroom. They can provide immediate feedback on various areas of writing since they process and respond to a text at near-lightning speed. When they identify areas of student writing that need improvement, such as word choice, clarity, cohesion, grammar, spelling, and punctuation, they can provide automatic suggestions for improving them.

The power of AI and technology to provide more real-time feedback adds value to a learner’s experience. As an assisted writing feedback tool, ChatGPT can also empower students to take a more active role in their learning progress. For instance, ChatGPT can generate writing prompts and exercises to help students hone their writing skills. Few students can improve their writing because writing-related tasks are infrequently assigned in school. One study found that only a quarter of middle school students and less than a third of high school students write about 30 minutes per day, which is the minimum recommendation for a kindergartener by national experts.

Regular writing practice improves writing skills and enhances critical thinking and communication. ChatGPT can encourage students to write by personalizing prompts based on specific skill areas, such as grammar, sentence structure, or organization. It can also tailor writing exercises to students’ preferred interests, like sports or history, or use culturally relevant and meaningful topics...

https://www.languagemagazine.com/2023/01/25/ai-can-strengthen-student-writing-not-weaken-it/

The University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University have banned students from using ChatGPT. Will those on the mainland take a similar stance?

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/how-will-chinese-universities-respond-rise-chatgpt?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial-daily&spMailingID=24713039&spUserID=MTAxNzcwNzE4MTk2NAS2&spJobID=2191493018&spReportId=MjE5MTQ5MzAxOAS2

Dear researchers,

Please refer to a recent published paper on ChatGPT and Learning Motivation

Article Impact of ChatGPT on Learning Motivation: Teachers and Stude...

All my best!

Dear respected researchers

We have worked on a paper on that particular issue (ChatGPT and Academic research)

Title: "ChatGPT and Academic Research: A Review and Recommendations Based on Practical Examples"

The article's link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369576448_ChatGPT_and_Academic_Research_A_Review_and_Recommendations_Based_on_Practical_Examples

Or

https://journals.cspc.edu.ph/index.php/jemds/article/view/175

I hope you will enjoy the article and it will be helpful for academic people.

Regards.

Social scientist sees hand of ChatGPT in list of non-existent papers cited in peer reviewer’s rejection...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chatgpt-generated-reading-list-sparks-ai-peer-review-debate

I recommend to read this manuscript.

ChatGPT in Academic Writing and Publishing: A Comprehensive Guide

Scientific writing is a difficult task that requires clarity, precision, and rigour. It also involves a large amount of research, analysis, and synthesis of information from various sources. However, scientific writing is also hard, time-consuming, and susceptible to errors. Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models, such as ChatGPT, can simplify academic writing and publishing. ChatGPT has many applications and uses in academic and scientific writing and publishing such as hypothesis generation, literature review, safety recommendations, troubleshooting, tips, paraphrasing and summarising, editing, and proofreading, journal selection, journal style formatting, and other applications.

In this book chapter, we will discuss the main advantages, examples, and applications of ChatGPT in academic and scientific writing from research conception to publishing.

Read online.

https://achtago.com/publications/list/chatgpt-in-academic-writing-and-publishing/

Download full text

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369817340_Chapter_2_ChatGPT_in_Academic_Writing_and_Publishing_A_Comprehensive_Guide

في الأغلب ستحدّ مثل هذه المصادر من إبداع الطالب في فعل الكتابة، خاصة حين يتعلق الأمر بمقالة قصيرة، غير أن مثل هذه المصادر ستكون مثرية للطالب والأكاديمي حين يستعان بها في كتابة مقالات بحثية مطولة@@

"Another concern is that students become conformist and have one way of thinking, which means losing out on many other ways of thinking...

We’re facing such complex interconnected problems in the world that we do need diverse ways of thinking and versatility if we are to solve problems like climate, for example..."

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20231207195947129