GAiIT Level 1: Case File Analysis
A Situational Application: Learning Academic Prose
The situation:
A student returns to university after years of work in the field to get a master’s degree. Years have passed since the student has written anything in an academic format. The student admits being unskilled at academic writing the last time university classes required it. This type of student is frequent in this program, and the course instructors have created assignments to help facilitate a better understanding of the structure and tone of academic prose.
Assignment topic:
Learning how to identify, critique, and produce a piece of academic writing on a topic related to the student’s work career.
The assignment:
Students are provided with five paragraphs on various topics related to their work field. These paragraphs were taken from blogs and magazines that used informal conversational written language. The students copy and paste the sample text into ChatGPT 4o, and (assuming the prompt engineering level of the student is low) this prompt is provided for the student to use to guide the Ai to do its job.
Prompt: In the role a professional academic journal editor, take the following sample text and re-write it to reflect the sort of writing that would be considered professionally academic and worthy of being published in a scholarly journal.
After each of the five writing samples is entered and rewritten, the student’s responsibility requires them to:
- Compare and contrast the sentence structure, and vocabulary.
- Create a list of commonly used academic words and phrases that were used in all five articles.
- Write a personal reflection about your experiences with academic writing citing specific times in your past that you struggled and how the Ai demonstration has impacted your academic writing ability.
GAiIT Level (1): The instructor uses Ai to produce part of the assignment, provides prompts that will provide the outcome they require, and attempts to build this assignment in a way that Ai cannot be used to complete the entire assignment without blatantly sounding like an Ai response. Promoting the use of the student reflection and commentary lowers the probability that Ai could be used to complete the same task.
Non- academic text used for demonstration (sample 1):
The National School Lunch Program provides nutritious meals for over 28 million students each day. Students living in low-income households can receive meals for free or at a reduced price. However, there can be barriers to participating in school meals for all these families, including the stigma associated with receiving free meals or day-to-day challenges completing school meal applications. Many families are also not eligible for free or reduced-price meals but may be
struggling financially. Overall, this can lead to school meal debt if a child eats breakfast or lunch at school but the family cannot afford the cost.
In March 2020, Congress realized that more students might face food insecurity – not having consistent access to enough nutritious food – due to school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. So lawmakers temporarily authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide school meals at no cost for students nationwide and to give schools more
flexibility in terms of how they could distribute food to families with children. Though, when people from the congress looked into the appropriations of the food, yeah, they were stunned to see that 50% of that food was wasted on campus.
The re-written text taken from ChatGPT using the previously mentioned prompt (rewrite):
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) serves as a critical initiative, providing nutritious meals to over 28 million students daily, particularly benefiting children from low-income households who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. However, several barriers hinder access to these meals, such as the social stigma associated with receiving free meals and the logistical challenges families face in completing meal applications. Furthermore, a significant number of households who do not meet the eligibility criteria for free or subsidized meals may still suffer financial hardship, which can result in school meal-related debt when students consume meals that their families cannot afford.
Moreover, In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting school closures in March 2020, Congress acknowledged the heightened risk of food insecurity among students, defined as inconsistent access to adequate nutritious food. To address this concern, lawmakers temporarily authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide meals at no cost to all students nationwide and to offer greater flexibility in meal distribution to ensure that children continued to receive adequate nutrition despite the disruptions. However, subsequent investigations into the allocation of these resources revealed that up to 50% of the food provided was wasted on school campuses, raising significant concerns regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of the program’s implementation.
Student response to the first text sample:
- 1. Compare and contrast the terminology, sentence structure, and vocabulary:
The first criterion that stood out was the inclination to put the organizational abbreviations in the text. Abbreviation happened twice in the first article. Also, words were switched out; for example, the sentence starting with the phrase ‘“there can be barriers.” Ai re-wrote the sentence to give it a more active and less passive tone. The Ai changed the phrasing to, “several barriers hinder access” which gives the reader the idea that barriers actually exist in contrast to potentially existing barriers. The AI included more sophisticated language, such as “Congress acknowledged” rather than “Congress realized”. To me, the difference between the two phrases is noticeable. In addition, the word “However” would always start a sentence. It would never be found as a transition between two thoughts in the same sentence. Furthermore, when speaking of “it,” these object pronouns were used very sparingly, if at all. Most of the time, the Ai rewrite simply included the name of the object rather than using “it” or “them.”
2. Create a list of commonly used academic words and phrases that were used in all five articles
The AI included more sophisticated language, such as “Congress acknowledged” rather than “Congress realized”. To me, the difference between the two phrases is noticeable. The word “allocation” was used twice to demonstrate the distribution of something in a more sophisticated manner. The word “though” was almost always replaced with the word “However.” In addition, the word “However” would always start a sentence. It would never be found as a transition between two thoughts in the same sentence. The word “moreover” was commonly used to transition ideas that were different but addressed the same general topic. The word “significant” provided a more academic way of saying “important,” which sounds more pedestrian and less academic. The term “furthermore” also took on a transitory role for the reader, moving them from one related point to the next.
3. Write a personal reflection about your experiences with academic writing citing specific times in your past that you struggled and how the Ai demonstration has impacted your academic writing ability.
The Ai rewrites introduced several significant elements to my writing that I was unaware were “dumbing down” my written communications. In my undergraduate days, I didn’t do a lot of writing as an engineer, but on the off chance I had to research and write something, I did not use these words. Until now, I wasn’t aware that certain key trigger words scream out “NERD!” or rather “expert” on any specific subject. I was a chronic user of the “it” and “them” pronouns and it lacked the direct specificity to which I was talking. Using the actual words would have made the text carry more expert-level weight.
Next: All Ai was open to use, but also specifically targeted. We will talk about the impact of using Ai as a source of content for learners.
