9 Tips for Using AI for Academic Writing (without cheating)
How to Responsibly Use AI in Academic Settings
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to offer students substantial support for independent learning and writing. Not to mention, AI is changing how students engage with academic material. As AI literacy among students and scholars increases, there is an incentive for students to begin mastering how to responsibly use these tools within their academic pursuits.
Understanding AI and its application in academic settings is more than just a fad—it’s becoming critical for your academic success. A recent study from the University of Darmstadt in Germany showed that over 50% of all students have already used AI for their studies. But engaging with AI responsibly involves learning about its capabilities and its limitations.
Whether you’re tackling essays, research papers, or complex analyses, AI can now offer streamlined and personalized assistance. Yet, pivotal questions remain: how can you use AI tools without compromising academic integrity? Is it possible to use AI in academia without it being considered cheating by your university? And how can you still stand out if everyone is using AI?
The enthusiasm for AI’s potential in education has already sparked a vital dialogue among educators and researchers as to how students can ethically integrate AI into their studies. At thesify, we’re deeply involved in this discourse and have extensively explored AI technologies ourselves. We’re committed to engaging with new AI technologies to understand their potential and limitations fully as it relates to assisting students. Our student-friendly writing coach is designed to help scholars like you navigate the complexities of using AI in your studies, so you can feel more confident in successfully using these tools without compromising your academic integrity or worrying about the right prompts.
In this post, we will give you 9 essential tips for how to use AI effectively and responsibly. We’ve done our research, and our fair share of experimenting with AI, to help you get on the right track.
1. Understand plagiarism
Simply said, plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s work as your own. Plagiarism is a widely recognized form of cheating in academia. It doesn’t matter if the content was written by another person, your cat, or an AI tool such as ChatGPT--if it’s not yours, you must properly cite its origin. Rephrasing or rewriting does not exempt you from your obligation to cite. If it’s not your original work, you cannot use it without proper citation. Don’t even try. Committing plagiarism is a failsafe way to get expelled from your class or university, and even if you’re not caught immediately, it can still end your career later on.
There are many online resources that explain all the subtleties and corner cases in detail. A good starting point are the guidelines published by the University of Oxford (here). For the rest of this post, we will assume that you want to stay clear of any form of plagiarism.
2. Find (and read!) Your University’s AI Policy
Before integrating AI into your academic work, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with your university’s official policy on the use of AI. These policies are becoming increasingly common and can differ considerably across academic and scientific organizations.
In addition, there may be more detailed instructions from your school, professors or course assistants. So, find and thoroughly read these policies.
Understanding the rules that apply to you and your courses is crucial. Failing to comply with these rules could lead to severe academic penalties. If in doubt, ask your professor or course instructor. Generally, presenting AI-generated content as your own work is considered plagiarism. Beware that institutions are increasingly using advanced AI-detection software to enforce these policies.
Staying well-informed is your best defence against potential infractions. Some tools, like thesify.ai, are specifically designed for students and provide resources to help them communicate with professors about its capabilities and limitations.
3. Be Transparent About AI Usage
So, you are using AI to help with your essays or research projects? Be open about it. Disclosing your use of AI tools not only demonstrates honesty but also adds to your academic credibility. Think about it this way: just like authors in academic research journals explicitly state their methods, you should also acknowledge any AI assistance in your assignments.
For example, if you’re using a tool like R or Zotero, you’d mention this in your methods section. Similarly, if you’ve used a tool like thesify to organize your ideas and writing process, be just as transparent! Being open about your methodologies helps fellow scholars understand how you arrived at your findings and insightful conclusions. Whether it’s detailed in the methodology section or acknowledged at the end of your paper, showing that you’ve used AI responsibly positions you as a savvy, ethical scholar. It shows that you're thinking like a responsible academic, and your professors will appreciate your integrity.
A study conducted by Kalamazoo College psychology researchers investigated both student and faculty perceptions of ethical AI use in student writing. The study reveals something interesting: both students and faculty find citing AI in a paper’s references more ethically acceptable and less compromising to learning than using AI for academic writing without referencing it. This is an important reminder that being transparent about AI use is not only advisable but expected in academic settings.
Want to really impress your professors? Consider attaching transcripts or screenshots of your AI use as an appendix when you submit your assignment. This advice is more than just theoretical—it’s a professional practice recommended by researchers who use AI to assist them in their own writing process.
4. Understand AI’s Limits
AI is a powerful tool but certainly not infallible, particularly when it comes to detail. This limitation arises from AI language bots’ inability to comprehend new information, generate original insights, or conduct deep analysis. For example, AI may not fully grasp all subtleties of technical language or the nuances of an argument. This can be a big issue, because though the response from the AI seems well-written, it may not only lack the depth that your professor is looking for, but it may also be wrong or nonsensical.
Before you integrate AI into any important project, test its capabilities on smaller, less critical tasks. This allows you to learn about its optimal use, assess its reliability, and identify pitfalls or recurring errors. But remember, AI cannot be held accountable for the correctness of its output, hence you are responsibility for checking everything it produces.
Once you understand the limits of AI, you can use it safely to its full potential. Use it to brainstorm and guide your thinking. Use it to prompt questions to you and aid you in developing your ideas and organizing your thoughts. Use it to stimulate your critical thinking and creativity, essential skills for your academic success.
5. Use AI as Your Guide
Did you know that Large Language Models like ChatGPT are actually better at explaining you how to solve a problem than at solving it? Use this to your advantage. Think of AI as your digital tutor. It can suggest ideas and help plan your work, but remember the final work must be yours. Research has demonstrated that AI’s guidance is particularly effective at simplifying complex topics into manageable, digestible pieces. This means that AI can be your super-power for approaching difficult problems or concepts that initially appear impossible and daunting. Using AI interactively allows you to ask questions and get clarifications in real time—a capability that traditional textbooks or scientific articles certainly don’t have!
Similarly, you can integrate AI into the various stages of writing essays or reports, such as brainstorming, outlining, reviewing, and proofreading. These are aspects of the writing process where AI’s extra guidance can really help to take your ideas to the next level, rather than replacing your originality. Tools like thesify.ai even provide you with an integrated solution for AI assisted essay writing.
Using AI to complement your intellect is your best bet in ensuring that your final result is both high quality and distinctly yours.
6. Use AI to Explore a New Field and its State of Art
Use AI to explore the field or question you want to write about. AI can swiftly pull together vast amounts of information on your chosen topic or course assignment, providing you with a comprehensive overview. With this information, you can then find the most relevant background reading. But beware when you use AI for literature search. Tools like ChatGPT, may suggest fictitious references. Many AI tools also allow you to summarize the main aspects of an article or another resource. While this may greatly speed up your research, make sure that you read all relevant articles or passages yourself, as language models may not understand everything (see above).
Experts recommend that when using AI, you should carefully verify all statements and references to ensure you fully understand and agree with AI’s suggestions. Cross-check these references with reliable academic databases such as Google Scholar or Semantic Scholar to confirm their validity. Thus, you can ensure that your research is well grounded in accurate and trustworthy information.
You can combine the best of the two worlds: Use AI as your guide and coach to find and summarize resources. Then work through the most important material on your own to add depth and detail. You will learn faster and develop your critical thinking skills.
7. Use AI to Explore Different Perspectives
AI can simulate different viewpoints or arguments. Researchers found that, when properly prompted, AI can make helpful analogies or interesting links to concepts and ideas you may not have considered. Use this feature to enrich your essays with diverse, well-rounded arguments that reflect multiple sides of a story.
For example, if your topic is cryptocurrencies, use AI to develop personas such as an investor who profited greatly or someone who suffered losses in a pump-and-dump scheme. This approach helps you present a balanced view by incorporating diverse and potentially conflicting perspectives, enhancing the depth and richness of your analysis.
Using AI to explore different perspectives broadens your understanding and demonstrates critical thinking—a skill highly valued in academia. Integrating different viewpoints into your essays not only shows that you have considered multiple angles, it also allows you to synthesize more convincing arguments and conclusions.
To maximize this benefit, ensure that your prompts to the AI are clear and specific. The quality of AI-generated content depends a lot on how well you frame your questions and scenarios. Encourage the AI to explore different aspects of a topic, hypothetical situations, or alternative outcomes.
8. Use AI to Create Outlines and Get Feedback on Your Draft
While you should not use AI to generate text for you, you may very well use it to organize your notes into an outline or to give you feedback on what you’ve written so far.
Researchers have found that AI can also “help to break mental log jams when writing, or when struggling to write those first words.”
Thus, you can use AI as catalyst when you’re staring down an empty page. Thesify, for example has a feature that guides you from the initial idea or instructions for an essay to an outline from where you can start writing. This not only saves you time but also structures your thoughts coherently from the start. However, remember to always personalize the output to fit your voice and meet academic standards.
You also may want to experiment with using AI as a proofreader or editor. After drafting, AI tools have proven to be successful in picking up on whether key topics or points were adequately covered. When used wisely, AI can act like a personalized professor or tutor, providing insightful feedback than may even may spark new ideas for your writing. Focus on critically assessing the feedback rather than blindly trusting AI-generated content.
9. Use AI to Refine Your Writing
This tip is in an area where different guidelines may contradict each other, so be sure you check carefully which rules apply to you (see tip 1 and tip 2). Let AI suggest refinements for clarity and coherence in your drafts. Some experts even recommended that writers improve their spelling, grammar, or syntax with AI. Let AI be your on-demand reader or peer reviewer. But don’t forget to critically assess and potentially modify its feedback and suggestions. This tip even comes from the guidelines for authors of the largest academic publisher, which permits authors to use AI for improving readability and grammar in their articles. However, if you are a student, your university or professor may impose different rules (see above). And remember, it is not just recommended, but required, that you check your final manuscript carefully.
It’s also important to note the extent to which AI can refine your work without it being considered cheating by your university. Asking AI to rewrite a draft will likely cross the line with your professors. Proofreading and obtaining feedback you need to apply yourself, is likely a safer bet. Again, here’s why finding your course’s AI-policy was the first tip we offered!
So, can a university student use AI without it being considered cheating?
As is with most things in academia, the answer to this question turns out to “it depends”. Start with the policies or guidelines of your course or university, then, if still in doubt, reach out to your course instructors. Submitting an AI generated text is certainly cheating, but beyond that, there is a lot of room to use AI constructively and without risking your academic integrity. Critical here is to be thoughtful in which AI tools you choose to use. Look for AI tool developers that have your academic integrity in mind, like thesify.ai, for example.
Finally, keep in mind that AI is a rapidly developing field and with-it opinions about permissible use and best practices are bound to change. Stay up-to-date with your university’s policy and anticipate changes.
AI Usage Statement
In developing our blog post titled “9 Tips For Using AI for Academic Writing (without cheating),” we employed thesify, an advanced AI-powered tool, throughout the content creation process. Below is a breakdown of how thesify contributed:
Resource Exploration and Research: thesify was instrumental in gathering and synthesizing relevant research and resources on the ethical use of AI in academia. This ensured our content was well-informed and up-to-date with the latest discussions and developments in the field from credible resources.
Outline Creation and Structuring: The AI helped us construct a comprehensive outline, suggesting logical sections and subtopics, based on our initial ideas for the post, that would effectively convey our message to the target audience. This structured approached allowed us to cover all essential aspects thoroughly.
Content Refinement and Editing: thesify assisted in refining the draft by suggesting improvements in phrasing, grammar, and coherence. It also recommended areas where more detailed explanations or additional references were needed, ensuring the content was both clear and substantiated.
Feedback and Revision Suggestions: Throughout the writing process, thesify provided feedback on how to improve our blog post, pointing out sections that required further elaboration or stronger evidence. This feedback elevated the overall quality and persuasiveness of the article.