Illustration Shutterstock Should students and PhD candidates be allowed to use ChatGPT and if so, how? This is the question a WUR working group will be studying.
The working group was set up by the Dean of Education Arnold Bregt after a meeting with assessment experts at Education & Student Affairs. ChatGPT is software that generates original text based on questions put by the user. The texts can’t be detected by plagiarism scanners because they aren’t copied word for word from existing sources.
The working group has been asked to come up soon with recommendations on the use of ChatGPT by Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD students. Bregt: ‘The program can certainly be used to write a general introduction. You have to ask whether that is a bad thing. That already led to a lively debate in the meeting. For example, should you mention ChatGPT in the author’s statement? The program raises numerous urgent issues, including about authorship.’
Not rubbish
Bregt uses ChatGPT too. ‘It works fine for general texts. Instead of googling information, you ask ChatGPT. It doesn’t produce rubbish, but it becomes less suitable once you go into more detail.’ ChatGPT seems to signal the end of the classic essay assignment, but we will have to see whether that is actually the case. Bregt has suggested to the rector Arthur Mol that they discuss the problem with other universities.
Allso read Never sleep again, a background story on this topic.