The upcoming quarter will be the last in which master’s students still learn to write academic texts without AI. Alongside the regular course, a pilot is running with the same course with AI, but that one is only meant to collect information on how students use it. From February onward, however, the AI component will become a permanent part of the elective.

Not every student uses AI when writing, says lecturer Hatice Celebi. “We see big differences in how and whether students make use of it.” At TU/e’s Language and Writing Center, the addition of AI to the course is seen as inevitable. “The whole world is moving toward using AI more. Students need to be aware of its impact and be involved in the discussion.”

Transparent

But the course goes far beyond the debate about the use of AI. Master’s students will also learn how to actually apply AI in academic writing. “We want to give them the right tools. How can they be transparent about the AI tools they might use? How can they document their own work properly? And how can they safeguard their authorship and voice in their texts, even when using generative AI?” Celebi explains. She notices that AI can give students who struggle with writing a great deal of confidence.

She is well aware of the tension between the use of AI and issues such as plagiarism and intellectual property. The course is meant to provide students with guidance in the gray areas of what is considered plagiarism, or ethically sound. But is it even ethical to begin with, to use AI to draft texts in an academic setting? “When we try to define what is ethical, we often compare it to conventional ideas of writing. Now that we have generative AI at our disposal, we’re still judging ethics through those conventional frameworks. I think what we consider ethical or unethical is going to change. We therefore need to be open to experimenting in this area.”

AI-literacy

And that is precisely what the Language and Writing Center is doing. To develop the AI component, the center gathered insights from several research groups at the university, including at the Academy for Learning and Teaching and Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, says team manager Leonie Kasje-Adriaanse. There is also collaboration with Library and Information Services (LIS), which already offers a module on AI literacy. “We’re exploring whether we can integrate that module as a prerequisite. We want students to have some foundational knowledge before they start thinking about how to use AI in their writing,” Celebi adds. And yes, AI was also used in creating the new course, she adds. “To check if we had overlooked something. It was just a supplementary tool.”

So will this new component change the course significantly? Yes and no, says Kasje-Adriaanse. “Critical thinking, for example, has always been an essential part of writing, and that won’t change.” Assignments such as “Write a text using AI” will therefore not be part of the course. Celebi: “We assume that some students will use AI at certain stages of the writing process, for instance in brainstorming or polishing texts. We provide them with the knowledge and tools to use it responsibly, so that their work remains truly their own and reflects their individual voice, authorship, and intellectual effort.”

Asked by the editor why the use of AI might be problematic in academic writing, ChatGPT responded that there are several reasons, mostly relating to quality, reliability, and academic integrity. Still, according to ChatGPT, it is a good idea to develop a course on academic writing with AI. Such a course “wouldn’t encourage students to let AI ‘do the work,’ but rather teach them how to integrate AI responsibly into the writing process while maintaining originality, depth, and academic integrity,” the system stated.

It then added—unprompted: “Would you like me to outline what such a course could look like (for example, main modules, learning objectives, and practical exercises)?”

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.