A few months ago I provided guidance for a colleague preparing a workshop on genAI for her postgraduate students. She got feedback from one of them after using Claude for proposal feedback, and I got permission to share it here. Note that I’ve edited the comments for clarity.
This is the kind of use-case that I think has a lot of value for students. And suggests further that most students aren’t interested in cheating. They want to do the best work they can, and tools like Claude help them to do just that.
It’s our job to guide them in that use.
Compared to ChatGPT, Claude seems to be more useful for academic writing. What is nice about Claude is that I uploaded my proposal and asked if the proposal is written in an academic manner, what changes I can make, and what journal articles, reports and books can I add to improve the proposal.
Although I don’t have the premium account, the response from Claude was very useful. It first commented on the proposed title, noting that it was clear. It then unpacked all the sections of my proposal with comments that I would normally get from a supervisor including:
- Notes on structure.
- Proposed that I shorten my sentences because they were too long and even pointed out which lines split.
- Commented on the logic and the flow of ideas.
- It recommended that I explain certain terms to improve my arguments.
- Pointed me to articles that I could use for certain issues in the proposal.
Basically, you can instruct Claude in what to look for in your writing, without compromising your work with plagiarism. This is different to having it simply write everything for you.
I also like the feature where you can upload a resource and ask it to summarise certain points that you might not understand or ask it to look for certain things.
Claude seems to be credible but it will require students to use it, not for the purpose of writing for the student, but as a guiding tool in navigating research and articles.