Undergraduates’ Awareness of the Ethics of Generative AI Utilization in College Writing

This study examines the utilization of generative AI among undergraduate students and their awareness of ethics in college writing. It also identifies the demand for ethics education related to writing using generative AI. A survey was conducted on 895 undergraduate students taking college writing courses at A University. The study found that first, undergraduate students who have had experience with university writing tasks employed generative AI used ChatGPT the most; they used it substantially to generate ideas and collect data when writing general reports. In addition, more than half of the experienced users were satisfied with generative AI. Undergraduate students comply with writing ethics when performing college writing and are well aware of the problems in using generative AI, but they have low awareness of citation methods in writing when using generative AI. There was a high educational demand for citation methods and writing ethics when performing writing using generative AI. Moreover, there were some differences in the level of awareness and educational needs depending on the undergraduate major and the experience of using generative AI. Accordingly, this study suggested the following measures in college writing subjects: education on how to comply with writing ethics and citation when using generative AI for writing, education that reflects the differences in students’ awareness and educational needs by major category, and education on how to use ChatGPT in generating ideas and collecting data when teaching how to write a report.