CoursePlus Draft Coach is a tool that assists students by identifying areas for improvement in their writing. The basic workflow is that students can upload a document to the tool and then receive AI-generated feedback via email.
The tool was developed in collaboration with BSPH faculty to address equitable integration of AI in support of teaching and learning. It is only available to students inside a current term's course site when faculty have enabled its use. In other words, faculty can choose whether or not to make it available to students for the duration of their course(s). Expectedly, some students may be nervous about using AI in their coursework; the goal is to provide a tool that the School can promote as helpful to students.
Faculty are encouraged to review any AI syllabus statements or other relevant communications, including assignment specifics. They should also remind students of other resources BSPH has to assist them in their studies, including the Writing Center.
Below is a breakdown of how CoursePlus Draft Coach works:
- The default setting is “off.” Before students can ever use the tool in a course, it must first be enabled by faculty.
- Any student enrolled in the course can reach the tool from the Resources dropdown menu.
- Students must read a long disclaimer and confirm that they have read it before using the tool.
- Students can then upload a document once every 24 hours in the course. The accepted file types are Word, PDF, and text files.
- The document is analyzed by an enterprise subscription of ChatGPT. The analysis is based off a generic prompt that includes the department and course names.
- Students then receive the analysis via email, which is structured in a very specific format. The output evaluates their content, evidence, contextual relevance, writing quality, and style/tone. The email also offers specific improvements for the work. Linked here is an example of the email students receive.
Faculty who enable this tool in a course site can see which students have used the tool, when, and how many times. The names of the uploaded files are also visible to faculty. However, faculty cannot access any files submitted, nor can they view the AI feedback sent to students.
Important:
- CoursePlus Draft Coach is an opt-in tool that must be turned on by faculty before students can use it in a course.
- The tool does not write papers for students. Instead, it evaluates what they have already written.
- Any information uploaded to the tool is not stored for training the AI model, meaning privacy is guaranteed.
- Access to the tool can be disabled at any time, and access to the tool is automatically disabled for students on the end date of a course. The student activity log remains visible even if access to the tool is revoked.
- The tool is not available in non-academic course sites.