Key Messages
- If your instructor allows you to use GenAI for writing assignments, use it to assist rather than replace your research and writing processes, and always document and describe your use.
- Make developing your AI literacy a priority.
- Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center writing consultants can help you make responsible choices about how to use GenAI for writing assignments.
Writing is Part of Everyone’s Life
All of us write throughout our lives to communicate information and ideas in the non-academic communities we’re part of such as social media, work, home, friend groups, organizations, and other settings. We may also write creatively, for personal pleasure, or for self-reflection.
As a college student, you also write to learn–you take notes in class, brainstorm about what you think, make outlines, and reflect upon ideas and topics. You write to summarize and respond to what you read. You write to demonstrate your learning and thinking–your ideas, analysis, and synthesis of knowledge–to your instructors.
Focus First on Developing your own Writing Intelligence
Writing well is an acquired skill rather than a natural talent; your ability as a creative decision-maker when it comes to writing develops through practice and reflection over many years–usually extending well into professional life after graduation!
Engaging actively and intentionally in the writing process helps you develop as a critical thinker and problem-solver; writing, thinking, and learning go hand-in-hand. Completing your assignments using your ideas, analysis, and writing benefits you as a learner and contributes significantly to your development as a thinker–it develops your writing intelligence.
Use GenAI to Assist, not Replace, your own Writing Processes
There are times when using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools or platforms such as ChatGPT, UT Verse, Microsoft Co-Pilot, and others during your writing process may make sense, and developing your AI literacy–your understanding of when and how to use GenAI tools productively and responsibly in a way that assists your writing processes without replacing them with AI use–is important.
Seek out Guidance on your Use of GenAI
If your instructors allow you to use GenAI, seek them out during office hours to talk about how you’re using it. In addition, the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center is here to support the development of your writing intelligence, including the development of your GenAI literacy. When it comes to GenAI, we want to help you: understand how GenAI output is created and how to use it to generate text, learn how to evaluate how well GenAI output meets the context-specific needs of particular writing situations, and make informed decisions about when and how to use GenAI–and how doing so may benefit or harm yourself or others.
General Guidelines
Affirm your commitment to honor and integrity when completing written work; be guided by the University of Tennessee’s Honor Statement and academic integrity policies, which are published in the Undergraduate Catalog.
- Affirming your commitment to honor and integrity means affirming that the written work you submit is your own and that you always cite/document anything you did not compose on your own.
- The Honor Statement is as follows: “An essential feature of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is a commitment to maintaining an atmosphere of intellectual integrity and academic honesty. As a student of the university, I pledge that I will neither knowingly give nor receive any inappropriate assistance in academic work, thus affirming my own personal commitment to honor and integrity.”
- You should consider the use of AI-generated text without citing or documenting it to be inappropriate unless your instructor explicitly says it’s okay to do so in certain circumstances. Turning in work that is completely AI-generated (even when AI use is allowed) is not acceptable (unless it’s part of an assignment that explicitly instructs you to do this). You should not use GenAI at all if your instructor does not allow it.
Read each instructor’s policy on using GenAI (found on the course syllabus), and follow each carefully. UTK instructors may make their own rules about whether and how you can use GenAI in their course.
- ASK each of your instructors for their GenAI policies and guidelines. Be prepared to follow different AI-related rules in each of your classes.
- Instructors may have open use, moderate use, or strict use guidelines.
- Examples of questions you could ask your instructor include: Can I use ChatGPT (or another GenAI tool) to help me brainstorm? To help me research? To help me summarize readings? To help me write an outline? To help me revise a draft I’ve written? How would you like me to cite GenAI output? How would you like me to describe how I used GenAI tools during the writing process?
Develop your functional, evaluative, and ethical GenAI literacy: Become familiar with how Large Language Models (LLMS) and GenAI tools such as ChatGPT work, what they can and cannot do well, and the benefits and risks of using them.
- Large Language Models (LLMs) “work by using statistics and probability to predict what the next character (i.e., letter, punctuation mark, even a blank space) is likely to be in an ongoing sequence, thereby “spelling” words, phrases, and entire sentences and paragraphs” (MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI Working Paper, p. 6). You can find additional information about LLMs on Wikipedia and by viewing some short YouTube videos, Practical AI for Teachers and Students, created by Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton.
- Some benefits of using GenAI tools include:
- They can help you get started and brainstorm–help to “stimulate thought and develop drafts that are still [your] own work and to overcome…obstacles to tackling invention and revision” (MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI Working Paper, p. 9).
- They can help you during the research process, such as with identifying useful keywords to find relevant information on a topic.
- If English is an additional language for you, they can assist in learning writing conventions for vocabulary, sentence structure, and written genres.
- Some risks of LLMs and GenAI tools include:
- GenAI textual output is known to include hallucinations–made-up details–that sound very believable.
- Depending on the LLM source(s) from which it draws, GenAI textual output may include gender, racial, and language biases and biases against particular viewpoints that can be hard for you to detect and can foster inaccurate ideas about particular groups of people or events.
- Production and use of LLMs depletes valuable natural resources.
- Your opportunity to engage in valuable writing, reading, and thinking practice that helps you develop your writing intelligence and skill is diminished if you simply “push a button” to generate text and submit it as your work. (Doing that would also be against your commitment to academic integrity.) GenAI tools merely assemble pre-existing and often incorrect, biased text that does not demonstrate your writing intelligence–your ability to make choices about how to write for a particular purpose, to a particular audience, or in a particular situation.
See this “Student Guide to AI Literacy,” developed by the participants of the Critical AI Literacy for Reading, Writing, and Languages Workshop, an initiative of the MLA-CCCC Task Force on Writing and AI.
Guidelines for Using GenAI Tools for Writing Assignments
If your instructor allows you to use GenAI tools while working on a writing assignment, the guidelines below are intended to help you develop ways to use GenAI tools to support your development and success as a learner and writer and maintain your commitment to academic integrity.
- Keep track of and follow each instructor’s specific guidelines for how you may use GenAI tools.
- In courses where your instructor allows use, keep a log of your GenAI use; the university has recommended that instructors who allow GenAI use ask students to document it.
- Commit to using GenAI tools with care, making sure you do not copy GenAI output directly into your work without attribution or simply replace your own intentional, purposefully composed work with GenAI
- Learn how to prompt effectively and responsibly, being as specific as possible. The quality of your prompts will affect the quality of the GenAI output. Your prompt should not be “Write me a paper on [topic.]”
- Fact-check all GenAI output, because more likely than not it will include inaccurate information. (Note that “closed prompting”–making queries only about source material you provide in your prompt, reduces the likelihood of inaccurate output.) Since you’re not likely to know what’s accurate and what isn’t, you must fact-check the AI output before relying on it in any way.
- Critically evaluate all GenAI output text, paying close attention to gender, racial, and language biases and biases against particular viewpoints.
- Quote, paraphrase, and cite GenAI-generated text just like you would quote, paraphrase, and cite any other external source material in your written work. Here are some common citation formats:
- Include the following statement to document and describe your use of GenAI: “The author(s) would like to acknowledge the use of [Generative AI Tool Name], a language model developed by [Generative AI Tool Provider], in the preparation of this assignment. The [Generative AI Tool Name] was used in the following way(s) in this assignment [e.g., brainstorming, grammatical correction, citation, which portion of the assignment].”
- When sharing your work in progress with your instructor, a peer reviewer, or a writing consultant, tell them if you’ve used GenAI tools during your composing process. You should point out any part of a draft that includes GenAI output–even if it’s a draft in which you have not yet included your citations–and you should describe how you used GenAI (e.g., “I used ChatGPT to brainstorm”). This will help you and your instructor, peer reviewer, or writing consultant have a transparent, productive, and responsible conversation about your draft and your writing.
- Reflect on your use of GenAI: How are you using it? What does it offer you as a writer? What are you learning about writing while using GenAI? Is using GenAI helping you make better choices as a writer–and if so, how? What are your concerns about using GenAI during the writing process? What is your ethical stance on using GenAI in certain writing situations; for example, given its impact on the environment, when do you consider GenAI use warranted?
For guidance, questions, and feedback on your writing in any subject and during any part of the writing process–including how to use GenAI productively and responsibly–make an appointment with a Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center writing consultant at https://UTK.MyWCOnline.com.
Contact the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center at writingcenter@utk.edu
Photo credits:
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