A High-Stakes Writing Assignment Incorporating ChatGPT: Professional Writing for Healthcare

Heidi A. McKee
Miami University

In this project, via a series of scaffolded assignments, students selected and read medical journal articles and then drafted and revised research summaries for lay audiences, exploring, analyzing, and integrating the use of AI writing systems throughout the process. This assignment is adaptable to a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses.

1. Overview of Research Summary Assignment 

In this project, we will examine a significant area of healthcare writing—writing about research for lay audiences.

Medical and scientific research articles are complicated documents filled with specialized, jargon-filled language that can be very hard for non-medical specialists to understand. Thus, an important area of healthcare communication is to make important health information and research more accessible to everyday people, often in the genre of the press release or the newsletter or blog posting.

For this project, you will find a peer-reviewed research article in an area of medicine and health that interests you and will summarize it in various collaborations with artificial intelligence writing systems.

You will first read and write (on your own, no AI) a summary (350-550 words) of the article in a press release or blog/newsletter format for a lay audience that you identify (e.g., pregnant women reading Pregnancy magazine; parents who subscribe to blog about asthma). A peer will respond to that draft.

Then you will explore and experiment with a generative AI tool, analyzing your own and the AI’s writing. Working with AI and your writing you will revise your summary based on feedback from peers and ideas/language gained from the AI to produce a finished summary.

You will also complete a reflection on the process of writing with AI, considering your experiences as a writer and as a writer collaborating with an AI system in the drafting process and what ethical and composing issues you see arising with these systems, and why.

[It’s important to remember that you are the writer with the agency and final decision-making. AI writing systems such as ChatGPT are impressive in how quickly and (mostly) correctly they can generate writing, but that does not make what they write the best option. You have a unique voice and critical insight as a person and rhetorician familiar with the audience, purpose, context for which you’re writing, so consider carefully what you wish to include in your final write-up.]

2. Readings & Samples on Writing about Research for the Public

[I do not include this assignment here just to get to AI more quickly, but if anyone would like the many resources I’ve gathered on this, please let me know. The key point is that students spent time learning about and reading about two (of the many) genres of lay summaries: newsletter/blog entries & press releases.]

3. Find, Read, & Take Notes on Research Article 

Find, read, and take notes on a research article in any peer reviewed journal that relates to health and medicine. Then summarize the article (either in the form of a press release or a newsletter/blog post) for a particular publication and for a particular audience. Your summary should be ~350-550 words written single-spaced.

Please post the pdf of the article you picked to the project Google folder so peers and I when reading your drafts will have the article easily available for review.

Also, very important: Please make sure you can copy and paste text from your article so the gen AI tool can read it.

4. Draft a Summary & Peer Respond 

Please write a rough draft posting in Google by [date/time] and please read and comment on a [assigned] peer’s draft by [date/time]. Please identify at the top of your document the audience and context and genre for your draft. Be sure the pdf of your article is available for peers to read. As long as you have a robust draft and provide thoughtful and detailed feedback to a peer that shows you have read their article and read their summary well you will receive full credit on this assignment.

5. Class Activity: AI Writing Systems [full class period] 

Today in class, first with my showing some samples to the whole class and then with you working in a team of three, we will examine and co-write with ChatGPT.

Article Paste/Summarize: Please ask ChatGPT to summarize your article (you may need to cut and paste it in sections) and save the outputs by downloading them or copying them. Then please be sure to post your outputs to our class Google Research folder.

Note Paste/Summarize: In AI writing generators, please run your Notes through saying something like Write a blog post about this information

Paraphrase/Rephrase/ReWrite: Now take the rough draft you wrote and paste that in and ask a system to paraphrase it or to rewrite it for a specific type of audience.

Copy Editing: You can also enter text to ChatGPT and ask it to correct all grammar/punctuation/spelling and explain to you the corrections it makes.

For homework, you will complete Reflective Memo on AI Writing Systems

6. Reflective Memo on Your Writing & AI Writing Systems 

Please write a memo to me (at least one-page, preferably more) where you analyze your writing and the writing produced by the AI systems, reflecting on what AI seemed to do well, what it didn’t do so well, where it helped you consider new ideas or new approaches or even just new possible words to use in your writing and too where it was or where you could see it being potentially problematic. Please quote from your draft and from AI’s drafts. Please upload your memo here.

Please include as appendices screenshots or cut-and-pastes of some of the outputs from various AI systems, being sure to identify clearly from which system the output is from.

7. Final Draft 

Please upload to [our university course management system] one file that will include 3 things:

• your final draft of your research summary (press release or newsletter/blog article).
• That same final draft with annotations that indicate (via highlighting and commenting) what words or ideas came from AI
• a reflective memo where you reflect further on the use of AI and what, if any, of your thinking on it has changed in the experience of revising from rough draft to final draft

Evaluation Criteria 
As I read and evaluate your final materials I will be considering:

• Accuracy in summarizing your article
• Tailoring of language and content to audience, purpose, and context
• Genre expectations for newsletter, blog or press release (depending what you chose)
• Integration of ideas and/or words/phrasings from AI that in the annotated version are identified and which are reflected upon in the memo
• Quality of copy editing for grammar/punctuation/spelling
• Inclusion of the bibliographic information for the article