With 89% of students admitting to using ChatGPT for homework, educators are working to develop AI-resistant writing assignments that can minimise the use of artificial intelligence. 

This type of assignment is designed to be as immune as possible to generative AI by including strategies that discourage its use and increase students’ motivation to complete the task independently. 

AI-resistant writing assignments typically focus on:

• Emphasising the writing process, not just the end product, so that students have to actively engage with each step in a way that’s not easy for AI to replicate. 
• Making revision a central part of the assignment so that students think critically about their work and ideas.
• Including reflective writing to show how students are thinking about and developing their ideas and to demonstrate their intellectual involvement and growth. 

AI-resistant writing assignments often require students to actively participate in the writing process. For example, a history professor might ask students to submit a draft of their analysis of a historical event, revise it after peer feedback, and then submit a final paper.

Throughout the process, the professor could ask questions that prompt students to reflect on the development of their understanding. In another case, a literature professor might ask students to write an essay about how their interpretations of a book have changed as they have revised and refined their analysis.

While some educators design such writing assignments out of concern for plagiarism and cheating, others, like Russell Johnson of the University of Chicago Divinity School, argue that much more is at stake when students “subvert” the writing process.

“Is learning how to write argumentative papers simply a drudgery to be automated away as soon as possible, or is it a spiritual exercise?” he asks in an article titled “On ChatGPT: A Letter to My Students.” 

He explains that the point of assigning tasks such as writing an essay on Zhuangzi is to help students develop critical thinking, even if this doesn’t directly increase employability. 

“… the reason why I insist you do writing assignments like this is that they give you valuable practice discovering insights and communicating them to others. Reading texts closely, encountering a problem, developing a plausible interpretation, and persuading readers of that interpretation—these are the steps one must go through in order to write a good paper. Going through these steps again and again makes us clearer thinkers and better communicators,” he adds.

‘Writing as a thinking tool’

Research also supports this argument, showing both direct and indirect links between writing and the development of cognitive abilities. This suggests that consciously improving writing skills offers benefits that go beyond better academic performance and career prospects. 

The article “Writing as a Thinking Tool” from Metropolitan State University of Denver, for example, explains how writing improves cognitive skills such as memory, critical thinking, creativity, and verbal skills, while also benefiting overall health. 

See also: How InstaText improves your writing and cognitive skills 

The many advantages of actively engaging in writing are undisputed. The question now is: Can students use AI in a meaningful and constructive way to submit assignments that meet language accuracy and quality standards, comply with academic guidelines for originality and authorship, and at the same time contribute to their intellectual growth? 

The answer lies in non-generative AI, a type of AI that does not create new content from scratch, as ChatGPT and similar AI writers do. Rather, it only analyses and improves the existing text, without altering the original beyond recognition or adding new information. 

Writing and editing assistants that mainly use this type of AI typically focus on tasks such as text enhancement, grammar and spelling correction, and style improvement. This means that they:

• Help users avoid plagiarism, hallucination, and confidentiality concerns associated with generative AI.
• Help users complete AI-resistant assignments.
• Enable users to actively participate in the writing process and improve their language and cognitive skills.

See also: How InstaText helps improve your communication 

Improve your writing and related skills with InstaText

InstaText is one of these tools that uses advanced language technologies, but not generative AI, to improve texts in terms of clarity, readability, flow, structure, style, tone, conciseness, word choice, grammar, spelling, punctuation and more during the editing and proofreading process. 

As an interactive editing assistant, InstaText suggests changes that users can view and accept or reject. If users pay attention to these suggestions, they become fully immersed in the editing process and benefit from the benefits described. This is one of the main advantages that InstaText has over generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in the editing process. 

Whether you’re working on an assignment, research paper, conference submission, or peer review, we believe InstaText can help you leverage technological advancements in a way that contributes to your personal, academic, and professional growth. 

If you’re already a user, learn more about the apps and platforms InstaText supports on our website so you can edit right where you write. If you are not yet a user and are curious to see how it can benefit you, you can try it out for free. 

“InstaText has completely changed the way I write and communicate in academic papers, social media, and other areas. I definitely recommend this tool for non-native speakers who usually struggle with their English skills. I wish I had learned about InstaText sooner.”

— İbrahim Niftiyev, PhD Researcher

“InstaText is an amazing tool. It helped me many times to finalize well-written articles. InstaText has completely changed the way I write and communicate in academic papers, social media, and other areas. I definitely recommend this tool for non-native speakers who usually struggle with their English skills.”

— Dr. Carolina Medina, University Professor and Journal Editor

“This looks amazing. As a professor of Neuroscience who has gotten old publishing 75 papers, I wish InstaText were available during my times. Love it.”

— Dr. Lawrie Rajendran, University Professor