NU WCP Writing Talks

Session 1:
Comparing, Compiling, and Critical Thinking: ChatGPT in Technical Writing

In this presentation, we will explore what happens when we use ChatGPT how to write a good questionnaire. This is a task our students undertake in WSC 210 (Technical & Professional Writing). With ChatGPT, the results of asking the question are complex, and include both valuable opportunities for students to develop critical insight into how surveys are written and how they should function, but also others where they would likely become confused and make poor choices. We consider how this frames teacher roles, including as a guide to content knowledge and a mentor to students applying their insights and understanding. We assess how this example task maps onto course learning objectives, how chatbot use may impact students' critical reading and critical thinking skills, and how it positions us going forward in our various courses. (Length: 25 minutes)

Session 2:
ChatGPT and Academic Writing Tasks

This presentation explores fundamental concepts in academic writing, focused on the use of ChatGPT as a tool to generate possible theses. The question ‘Why did Elizabeth married Mr. Darcy’ is used as an example prompt scaffolding our sense of common problems in student writing. The Triadic Componential Framework is used to model task complexity. The presentation then works through several elements of critical thinking, including causal reasoning, inferencing, time-order relations, assessing alternative explanations and building theoretical models to assess the sophistication of GPT’s text generation capabilities. This understanding is applied to examples from one of our 150 themed courses, focused on food, are given. Areas of potential where teachers can make use of GT in writing tasks, and also areas of weakness in GPT’s current abilities, are identified. (Length: 25 minutes)

Session 3:
Teaching IMRaD in the ChatGPT world

This presentation assesses the use of AI tools in generating text for the sections of the IMRaD paper. In doing so, it identifies areas of strength where tools, including GPT but also other free online AI-powered tools, may be effectively used in teaching IMRaD papers, and also areas where they may be inadequate or misleading. Issues identified include content quality, writing quality, appropriate focus in RQs and hypotheses, and a poor ability to distinguish between summarising, evaluating, and identifying significance in the discussion section. As methods sections have multiple subsections, this talk assesses GPT’s current capacity in helping students to write subsections on participants, sampling, instruments, and methods of data analysis. Options for course and task policy language regarding use of AI tools are presented.
(Length: 25 minutes)

Session 4:
Trinka: AI Grammar Checker

This session introduces the AI-powered grammar checker Trinka AI. This online grammar editor was made especially for scientific and technical writing. Its affordances include extensive grammar and style checking, including several citation styles. Students can use either online real-time editing, or they can download their paper with suggested changes and comments in track-changes. They can also click to download a version of the paper that includes all suggested edits already made, though this should be used with care. Trinka AI is not perfect, and some grammar errors get through. However, accuracy is better than one gets using Grammarly, and some areas of comparison are reviewed. Options include an MSWord plug-in, for editing on a desktop or laptop. Other AI-powered grammar checkers are given, and suggestions made for using Trinka in Writing courses.