A Pilot Study Inquiring into the Impact of ChatGPT on Lab Report Writing in Introductory Engineering Labs

This exploratory study focuses on the use of ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tool, by undergraduate engineering students in lab report writing in the major. Literature addressing the impact of ChatGPT and AI on student writing suggests that such technologies can both support and limit students' composing and learning processes. Acknowledging the history of writing with technologies and writing as technology, the development of GAI warrants attention to pedagogical and ethical implications in writing-intensive engineering classes. This pilot study investigates how the use of ChatGPT impacts students’ lab writing outcomes in terms of rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking and composing, knowledge of conventions, and writing processes. A group of undergraduate volunteers (n= 7) used ChatGPT to revise their original engineering lab reports written without using ChatGPT. A comparative study was conducted between original lab report samples and revisions by directly assessing students’ lab reports in gateway engineering lab courses. A focus group was conducted to learn their experiences and perspectives on ChatGPT in the context of engineering lab report writing. Implementing ChatGPT in the revision writing process could result in improving engineering students’ lab report quality due to students’ enhanced lab report genre understanding. At the same time, the use of ChatGPT also leads students to provide false claims, incorrect lab procedures, or extremely broad statements, which are not valued in the engineering lab report genre.