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Transcript for Video about Paper #2—Chat GPT and Mona Susan Power

Hello, everyone. I wanted to make a video to kind of walk through the paper number two assignment sheet with you. Now, some of you, I'm sure, are reading the assignment sheet and not having many questions, but some of you might have some questions, and you might be the kind of learner that benefits from hearing about an assignment as well as just reading it yourself.

So I'm going into materials. And then content. And I'm going to folder number two, which is where paper number two, A Council of Dolls, and all of the related content are here. Now, hopefully, you have been following your course syllabus carefully each week, so you are reading everything that is being assigned about this book.

So I'm going to go into the paper number two assignment sheet, and I'm just going to kind walk through it with you. So this is the second paper of the semester. It's worth 19% of the course grade. As you know, it's quite different from the first assignment. So, the assignment is for this paper, you will analyze the accuracy and quality of a Chat GPT generated essay about Mona Susan Power's novel, A Council of Dolls, and use Power's book to illustrate how the Chat GPT essay could be improved. I have provided the Chat GPT essay, and you can see the whole thing at the end of this assignment. If you scroll down, you'll see I copied and pasted that essay in here. And I show you, see where it's highlighted.

This is the prompt Professor Riehl gave Chat GPT. I told it to write an essay evaluating the theme of displacement in Mona Susan Power's A Council of Dolls. I told it to include a strong attention getter, thesis, and paragraphs that each begin with a claim about displacement in the book. Each body paragraph must use at least three pieces of evidence from the book, such as facts, examples, details, and quotations, and it must use proper MLA in-text citations and a Works Cited page. What you see here under the green where it says Chat GPT essay is the essay that Chat GPT generated. The only thing that I've changed here is that I changed the formatting a little bit, so I made it double spaced, so that it follows MLA formatting. Otherwise, this is what Chat GPT wrote about.

Now, some of you might think, well, why displacement? I think it would be more interesting to write about the importance of women or the role of silence in the novel or generational trauma. You know, many papers could be about those things. This is just the prompt that I gave Chat GPT, so we are focusing on this essay and this theme of displacement. So you don't have to write about any of those other things in the paper.

Let's go back up. To the start of the paper assignment, and it says, you will write a focused, organized, analytical, developed, carefully worded and edited paper that uses MLA format, has a Works Cited page, and includes proper in-text citations, so that's what you're going to do. Questions to guide your analysis. This is what you can think about these first couple of questions. When you answer these questions, you have a thesis statement. How well does Chat GPT analyze the theme of displacement in Mona Susan Power's novel, A Council of Dolls? How accurate and effective is the paper generated by Chat GPT, and how could it be improved?

So, you might think, Okay, well, the essay does a couple of things well, but it does a couple of things terribly. So what do I write? Your thesis statement can be one to three sentences long, and you're going to state it clearly without using “I.” The Chat GPT essay titled, and let's jump ahead because you're going to tell us what the title is. I'm going to go back to that essay, and we see the title right here. “Displacement in Mona Susan Power's A Council of Dolls" does a good job of X, Y, and Z, but fails to analyze the novel effectively because . . . and then you say why. Right? I'm not going to tell you exactly what to write. This is where you are using your own analysis, and you're going to be able to do this if you have read the book carefully. Okay, so you're already going to be thinking about specifics from the book, and that will help you know if the Chat GPT essay is accurate and effective. You're going to use evidence from both the Chat GPT essay and Power's novel to support your thesis and claims. What type of paper is this? This is an assignment that asks you to write a version of a literary textual analysis; an analysis carefully studies and examines a text. It's a type of argumentative essay where you persuade a reader of your assertion about the text. So how does this help you become a critical thinker and better writer? Well, good writing requires critical thinking and convincing writing. It requires that you read carefully to use your critical thinking skills to figure out, did that Chat GPT essay? Is it good? Is it high quality? Does it do an effective job and is it accurate? Right? Your careful reading of A Council of Dolls is essential to figuring that out.

You must convey your analysis in a clear, focused, and organized paper. It requires—sorry, I'm trying to highlight this, but it's not always working really well—it requires that you use sources, both the Chat GPT generated essay and the novel as evidence, and to cite that evidence appropriately according to MLA format. MLA format stands for Modern Language Association.

I walk you through the steps of how to approach this assignment. So first, obviously, carefully read the Chat GPT essay at the end of this assignment sheet, and you should be finished with A Council of Dolls, which we're finishing our discussion on this week. You're going to examine what the Chat GPT essay. Think about Power's novel, take notes. So here are some examples of questions to consider as you brainstorm. Which aspects of the assignment does Chat GPT do well? Which parts of the Chat GPT essay are accurate and of high quality? So maybe one of your paragraphs will start with “The Chat GPT essay does a great job of ...,” and then you finish that sentence. Then you're going to build a paragraph to prove that claim you have about the Chat GPT essay. So you'd use maybe some specifics from the Chat GPT essay, and follow them with an in-text citation. Maybe you're going to point out that it used some specifics from the book really accurately. And so you might mention where those are in the book and follow that with an in-text citation.

Maybe you have a couple of paragraphs that each focus on different ways that the Chat GPT essay failed. Maybe you're finding some inaccuracies. Maybe you're like, What? I don't see that in the book, right? If you see things that are “hallucinated”—That's the term that's used when Chat GPT and other AI makes things up because there's not enough information online and elsewhere to, kind of, you know, scrape the information from—then you're going to point that out. You would mention those specifics in the Chat GPT essay, follow them with an in-text citation. And you would point out also, what could it have pointed to in the book that would have made it a more effective essay.

Ultimately, you're doing two things, really. You're pointing out what works and what doesn't work in the Chat GPT essay. And any time you're saying what doesn't work, you're going to need to be pointing out what it could have done. You're showing what you know better than Chat GPT does about Mona Susan Power's book. Think about the Chat GPT's essay's intro, thesis paragraph, all of those things.

And then we talked a little bit about that thesis statement, right? Your thesis statement is one to three sentences. It takes a clear stand, and it's subject to disagreement. That goes at the end of your opening paragraph for the paper. Your opening paragraph leads up to your thesis statement that comes at the end of paragraph one. Earlier in that paragraph, you can use some kind of an attention getter. You can let us know what book you're writing about, so you're going to use A Council of Dolls, italicized, because that's the title of the book. Include the author's full name on the first reference. You'll also include the title of the Chat GPT essay in quotation marks because that's an essay. Then, you're going to start writing. Defend and prove your thesis statement in the body of the paper by writing several paragraphs. Each paragraph has three components, and you can see these highlighted in red here. The first is a claim. So each paragraph in the body of the paper is going to start with you making one assertion about the accuracy and quality of the Chat GPT essay, an assertion that helps prove your thesis. Second, then, in that paragraph, you're going to try to find evidence from the Chat GPT essay and Power's book, the evidence is details, specific examples, and facts, all followed with a proper in text citation. So I expect you to be using specifics from both the essay and the book in each paragraph in your paper.

And then next, you're going to be adding your in depth analysis. And that's your explanation of, your interpretation of, and your analysis of what you see in the Chat GPT essay and how it could have maybe done it better by using the book. Okay. So what to do while writing? You're going to maintain your focus. You're going to organize your paper effectively and use MLA to cite all evidence. I'm not going to read all of this to you because you can move through it.

Think critically. Show your critical thinking. I want to read it. So I want to see about 50% evidence from the essay and Mona Susan Power's book, and 50% your analysis of the evidence. Now, you've been doing this in discussion. So, think of it this way. When you've been answering questions about the book in discussion, you've already been doing what you're doing for this assignment, just on a smaller scale. You have a smaller one question, where you're responding to it, you're using specifics from the book, you're citing them, and you're putting in your analysis. Same thing. This is just on a little bit bigger scale. Maintain academic language and tone and edit carefully. So this papers in third person. No, “I think that” which is first person or “you,” which is second person. So instead of, I think that the Chat GPT essay failed when it did, blah, blah, blah, you're going to say, the Chat GPT essay failed when it did, et cetera. So just take the “I think” out. This is a minimum of three pages, not including the Works Cited page. Be careful about that. Make sure that you have some writing on page four. Four to six pages is ideal for this. This is not a five-paragraph essay, everybody. I know in high school you learned like introduction and three body paragraphs and a conclusion. This is college, and this is not a five-paragraph essay. So write as many paragraphs as you need to prove your thesis and illustrate depth. When students are just striving to meet the page minimum, those are usually papers that end up being a C or even possibly lower if the content isn't good, right? So what I'm looking for is to really see your brain on the page, analyzing that essay and showing me that you read this book carefully, and you understand it.

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Okay, I'm not actually a fan of conclusion paragraphs anyway in a short paper like this. You know, the ones that say, “In conclusion, et cetera, et cetera,” and then just repeat what you just said in the short paper. That's like filler. So don't do that. Just transition into your final claim and paragraph, with a transition like, the final way that the Chat GPT essay ineffectively explores the theme of displacement is. And a reader knows this is the last paragraph. As usual, just like your first paper, you're going to have an interesting title, a good introductory paragraph. And I list out specifically what belongs in the introductory paragraph right here. You're going to have that thesis statement that comes at the end of paragraph one. You're going to show your depth of critical thinking. You're going to

remain focused and organized. Don't go off track and start talking about the author's life or an interview that you read or whatever. You're going to keep your focus on the Chat GPT essay and the book. Organize those paragraphs so that they all three have a claim, a lot of evidence and analysis. Use appropriate textual evidence in the form of details and examples, facts, and quoted materials from the sources. So I don't want to see only quotations. So a couple of quotations are fine, but I also want to see you do some paraphrasing and summarizing in each paragraph.

So, for example, you know, if I was writing the paper, and at some point, I wanted to write about how the fact that the children aren't even allowed to sit next to their friends when they're on the train headed to the boarding schools, but I feel like that's another way that they are displaced even from their friends, and Chat GPT didn't write about that. I could just say that. And I would follow that specific example with an in-text citation of where that happens in the book. Okay, so I'm not going to quote it. I'm just going to write about it, but it is something specific from the book, so it needs an in-text citation after it. I have done the work cited page for you, and I'll show you where that handout is. You can copy and paste it into your own draft. And I've also shown you exactly how to do the in-text citations. So about plagiarism and AI use.

Obviously, do not plagiarize with this paper. Do not take the AI generated paper and run it through Chat GPT again. You'll get a zero, and I will report that to the dean. That's not what you're being asked to do anyway, so you wouldn't even be achieving what the assignment is asking. So please don't do that if you have any questions set up a meeting with me. I'm going to go back to Folder number two. You should watch this counseling video. I have transcripts of the videos that I'm posting. Mona Susan Power will be on campus October 30. So that is her poster. Please look at that. That is your extra credit opportunity, and it's going to be the last one of the semester. The discussion questions that I'm posting each week are posted here. You can see the full questions. This will also help you see where things are happening through the novel because I'm using in-text citations anytime I'm using specifics, I'm showing you here that you're going to do that. Using evidence from a source and an academic paper, make sure that you've looked at this. This walks you through how to quote, how to paraphrase, and how to summarize, and how you will follow those with proper in-text citations. Okay? Another thing that you'll do is right here, the Works Cited page. I've done the Works Cited page for you. You can down click on the arrow, download this onto your own paper and copy and paste it into your draft. When you copy and paste it, just double check it to make sure it didn't get rid of the formatting like the italics and such, depending on how you paste it, sometimes it does that. Then you can also see the grading sheet.

I hope this video is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to reading your papers.