Chatbot-supported Thesis Writing: An Autoethnographic Report
Nicolas Schwenke Heinrich Söbke Eckhard Kraft
The release of the large language model based chatbot ChatGPT in November
2022 has brought considerable attention to the subject of artificial
intelligence, not only in the public. From the perspective of higher education,
ChatGPT challenges various learning and assessment formats as it significantly
reduces the effectiveness of their learning and assessment functionalities. In
particular, ChatGPT might be applied to formats that require learners to
generate text, such as bachelor theses or student research papers. Accordingly,
the research question arises to what extent writing of bachelor theses is still
a valid learning and assessment format. Correspondingly, in this study, the
first author was asked to write his bachelor's thesis exploiting ChatGPT. For
tracing the impact of ChatGPT, methodically an autoethnographic approach was
used. First, all considerations on the potential use of ChatGPT were documented
in logs and secondly, all ChatGPT chats were logged. Both logs and chat
histories were analyzed and are presented along to the recommendations for
students regarding the use of ChatGPT suggested by Gimpel et al. (2023). In
conclusion, ChatGPT is beneficial in thesis writing during various activities,
such as brainstorming, structuring and text revision. However, there arise
limitations, e.g., in referencing. Thus, ChatGPT requires a continuous
validation of the outcomes generated fostering learning. Currently, ChatGPT is
to be valued as a beneficial tool in thesis writing. However, writing a
conclusive thesis still requires the learner's meaningful engagement.
Accordingly, writing a thesis is still a valid learning and assessment format.
With further releases of ChatGPT, an increase in capabilities is to be expected
and the research question needs to be reevaluated from time to time.