AWSD 2nd Anniversary Event co-sponsored by CEGLOC and JALT Ibaraki Chapter

EVENT REPORT- AWSD 2nd Anniversary Event co-sponsored by CEGLOC and JALT Ibaraki Chapter (2024-01-31)
 
IBARAKI, January ―the Academic Writing Support Desk（AWSD） at Tsukuba University celebrated a second anniversary to inform their commitment to helping students enhance their academic writing skills at the Center for Education of Global Communication (CEGLOC). The presenters, organizing teams, and tutors, mostly foreign graduate students, took turns showing how the AWSD was organized and what activities they were engaged in by sharing the results of the questionnaires on their program, which the participants could guess among four options. According to the AWSD, they collaborate with tutees seeking assistance with academic writing and provide a course with 30 minutes of face-to-face and online consultations. Especially the AWSD offers additional initiatives such as a study tour at Waseda University Writing Center and a Haiku competition, to engage in the art of Japanese short poetry. The AWSD’s activities currently gain positive student feedback and are expected to facilitate students who want to study overseas immensely. In the second part of the AWSD anniversary event, Professor Louise Ohashi of Gakushuin University lectured with the title “Using AI for Writing Development” as a keynote speaker. In the wake of the AI revolution, she did a practical demonstration and tried out some effective tools during the session. She referred to an example where a Japanese author who won a prestigious literature award with her work collaborated with AI. Ohashi gave the participants some brainstorming sessions, where the participants discussed what points they think, are great when they used it.  In Ohashi’s viewpoints on AI in academic writing, she considered AI as “someone” who could help learners without judgment while she supported Vygotsky’s theory of “Zone of Proximal Development” and “guidance” and also addressed the Ministry of Education’s perspective about the use of ChatGPT in universities and technical colleges. Then she explored the question if it was desirable to use AI in academic writing, considering the concern of cheating and the problem of creativity that should be developed in students. She also shared her practice of image generation created by AI.  She stressed teachers should need precise control over AI when used in the classroom. Furthermore, she introduced additional tools such as PoE AI, DeepL, Perplexity, and the latest version of Kahoot as effective aids to improve student’s writing skills. In summary, Ohashi’s presentation offered valuable insights into the integration of AI into academic writing classes.