The participants in this study consisted of ten doctoral students (N=10) from Finland and New Zealand enrolled in an English doctoral program in either Information Systems or Learning and Educational Technology. As the study aims to examine how ChatGPT is used as an AI-driven writing assistant, focusing on this particular population was intentional. Doctoral students were selected as a particularly relevant population for the study due to their familiarity with academic writing. The data collected from these students can provide valuable insights into the dynamics of human-AI collaboration in the context of advanced academic writing, where high standards and complex ideas are expected. The study employed an online experimental design conducted via the Zoom video conferencing platform. The experiment was structured around a writing task requiring participants to compose a short essay of approximately 500 words on artificial intelligence (AI) use in education. Participants were instructed to convey their opinions, supporting their arguments with evidence and examples. Ensuring that the task was representative of the types of writing tasks participants would encounter in their academic pursuits, the task design and rubric were kept closely similar to those used in typical university writing assignments. Participants were given 30 minutes to complete the writing task, during which they were allowed to use any tools deemed necessary, including ChatGPT and Google Scholar. The unrestricted access to tools was intended to mimic real-life writing situations and to investigate the extent to which participants chose to utilise AI-driven writing assistants during the task. During the experiment, screen recording was employed to capture participants’ interactions with the writing task and the various tools they chose to use. The Zoom session was recorded, providing a comprehensive view of participants’ behaviour and tools used during the writing task. A pre-survey questionnaire was initially conducted at the start of each session to collect information about participants’ backgrounds. All identifying information was removed from the recordings and survey responses to ensure data privacy and participant anonymity. A university lecturer then assessed the final product of the writing task, and the participants were categorised into successful and less successful writing sessions using the median score.

2023