Background: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) represents a potentially powerful, time-saving tool for grading student essays. However, little is known about how AI-generated essay scores compare to human instructor scores. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the essay grading scores produced by AI with those of human…

Integrated writing tasks, which require students to incorporate information from multiple sources into their writing, are gaining attention in language assessment and writing instruction due to their alignment with the expectations of academic and professional writing. Understanding what aspects of integrated tasks are perceived as challenging by…

This paper introduces a project to develop a digital academic writing tool at Leeds Beckett University (LBU). Essay X-ray is an interactive online tool designed to help students get to grips with the structure and style of academic writing and was developed using the Articulate Storyline 360 platform. The aim was to expand LBU's academic skills…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

Generative AI has become a quotidian discussion topic in many writing departments, and the conversations often focus on the negative aspects or the disruptions it has caused. A growing number of teachers and scholars, though, have embraced the new technology and welcomed it into their classrooms. In the Spring 2024 semester, students in my…

The aim of this project was to identify ways in which students are using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) technologies for the planning and researching stage of essay style assignments. The study recruited 30 students from various subject areas and levels of study and with different self-reported levels of confidence in using GAI tools.…

This study explores undergraduate students' use of ChatGPT when writing essays. Three students were tasked with writing two essays each for a coursework component for a Cambridge qualification facilitated by access to ChatGPT. After writing the essays, they participated in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of using the technology.…

This article examined student experiences before and after an essay writing assignment that required the use of ChatGPT within an undergraduate engineering course. Utilizing a pre-post study design, we gathered data from 24 participants to evaluate ChatGPT's support for both completing and grading an essay assignment, exploring its educational…

The value of generative AI tools in higher education has received considerable attention. Although there are many proponents of its value as a learning tool, many are concerned with the issues regarding academic integrity and its use by students to compose written assessments. This study evaluates and compares the output of three commonly used…

This paper discusses the creation and implementation of an experiential learning assignment focused on the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, which aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Using a grounded theory approach that combines analyzing 90 senior-level marketing students' reflective essays…

With sustainability becoming a familiar concept in society, higher education institutions have also started playing a more active role in this field, showing an increasing interest in students' comprehension of sustainability. This interest has led to the need for developing methods of assessing students' sustainability knowledge, as observed in…

Our organic chemistry course enrolls students from the medicine major. As future healthcare professionals, medical students should also take on the responsibility of publicizing scientific knowledge related to human health. Therefore, starting from 2020, we have designed an assignment that tasked students with writing a popular science essay for…

Generative large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can quickly produce informative essays on various topics. However, the information generated cannot be fully trusted, as artificial intelligence (AI) can make factual mistakes. This poses challenges for using such tools in college classrooms. To address this, an adaptable assignment called the…

The involvement load hypothesis (ILH), which predicts the lexical learning potential of tasks, assumes that writing sentences (SW) and compositions (CW) using novel target words (TWs) lead to similar lexical gains. However, research on the issue is scarce and contradictory. One possibility is that the higher cognitive load of CW hinders learning…

Background: Learners' writing skills are critical to their academic and professional development. Previous studies have shown that learners' self-assessment during writing is essential for assessing their writing products and monitoring their writing processes. However, conducting practical self-assessments of writing remains challenging for…