Leveraging ChatGPT in academic writing: ChatGPT enhances students' writing quality, writing experience, and ownership

The role of ChatGPT in promoting students' academic writing skills – especially when writing without ChatGPT after having used it – has not yet been empirically tested. In an experimental setup, first-year fashion design students engaged in three in-class writing exercises: composing introductions to scientific papers first without AI assistance, second with ChatGPT, and third again without assistance. Our findings demonstrate ChatGPT's statistically significant potential to improve students' writing quality, both during and immediately after its use. ChatGPT appears to be an effective and efficient tool for enhancing quality in academic settings, improving text quality (e.g., examiners' ratings, readability, cohesion) and subjective writing experience (e.g., ease, perceived control, cognitive load). These benefits are observed not only during its use but also when students write again without AI assistance. Moreover, whereas students' sense of authorship is reduced during the use of ChatGPT, their perceived ownership over their work increased in the third writing exercise as compared to their first exercise, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of feelings of ownership, which might help students to find a stronger connection and sense of achievement during academic writing. ChatGPT might help in learning academic writing. Additionally, we discuss findings and implications for using ChatGPT in education.