Assessing Graduate Students’ Perceptions in Exploring Generative AI for Scientific Writing
Resumo
Graduate students often face challenges in scientific writing. While Generative AI (GenAI) offers support, there is little empirical evidence on students’ perceptions of how they use GenAI tools for this purpose and the way tutorials can help. This study investigates graduate students’ perceptions of the use of GenAI to support scientific writing. We conducted an assessment with Graduate students in Computer Science using GenAI tools via provided tutorials. The results indicate positive evaluations of the tutorials’ clarity and overall quality. Students clearly view GenAI as an assistant rather than as a substitute for human authorship. Our findings suggest that the designed tutorials can complement instruction in scientific writing in graduate school.Referências
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Brown, T. B., Mann, B., Ryder, N., Subbiah, M., Kaplan, J., Dhariwal, P., et al. (2020). Language models are few-shot learners. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 33:1877–1901.
Cahill, L., Miller-Cochran, S., Pantoja, V., and Rodrigo, R. L. (2008). Graduate student writing groups as peer mentoring communities. Stories of mentoring: Theory and praxis, pages 153–58.
Creswell, J. W. and Clark, V. L. P. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage publications.
Daza, V., Martí-Testón, A., Casañ, M. J., and Castelló-Cogollos, L. (2024). Student perceptions of generative artificial intelligence in higher education: A systematic review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 21(1):52.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E. L., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A. K., et al. (2023). Opinion paper: ”so what if ChatGPT wrote it?”Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 71:102642.
Fanguy, M., Costley, J., Baldwin, M., Lange, C., and Wang, H. (2019). Diversity in STEM: Influence of demographic characteristics on learning preferences and educational technology use. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 28(6):556–568.
Gopee, N. and Deane, M. (2013). Strategies for successful academic writing: Institutional and non-institutional support for students. Nurse Education Today, 33(12):1624–1631.
Granjeiro, J. M., Cury, A. A. D. B., Cury, J. A., Bueno, M., Sousa-Neto, M. D., and Estrela, C. (2025). The future of scientific writing: Ai tools, benefits, and ethical implications. Brazilian Dental Journal, 36:e25–6471.
Gupta, S., Jaiswal, A., Paramasivam, A., and Kotecha, J. (2022). Academic writing challenges and supports: Perspectives of international doctoral students and their supervisors. In Frontiers in education, volume 7, page 891534. Frontiers Media SA.
Hwang, G.-J. (2014). Definition, framework and research issues of smart learning environments-a context-aware ubiquitous learning perspective. Smart Learning Environments, 1(1):1–14.
Imran, M. and Almusharraf, N. (2023). Analyzing the role of chatgpt as a writing assistant at higher education level: A systematic review of the literature. Contemporary Educational Technology, 15(4):ep464.
Inouye, K. and McAlpine, L. (2019). Developing academic identity: A review of the literature on doctoral writing and feedback. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14:1–31.
Johnson, R. B. and Christensen, L. B. (2024). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Sage publications.
Kasneci, E., Seßler, K., Küchemann, S., Bannert, M., Dementieva, D., Fischer, F., Gasser, U., Groh, G., Günnemann, S., Hüllermeier, E., et al. (2023). Chatgpt for good? on opportunities and challenges of large language models for education. Learning and individual differences, 103:102274.
Ketsman, O., Droog, A., and Qazi, S. (2025). Mapping the prevalence of mixed methods research in educational technology journals. Computers & education, 226:105207.
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X.-H., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., and Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on chatgpt: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an ai assistant for essay writing task. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872, 4.
Kusmaryono, I., Wijayanti, D., and Maharani, H. R. (2022). Number of response options, reliability, validity, and potential bias in the use of the likert scale education and social science research: A literature review. International Journal of Educational Methodology, 8(4):625–637.
Lax, J. R. (2014). Engaging graduate students in the practice of authoring scientific texts. International Journal of Science Education, 36(10):1636–1662.
Lendvai, G. F. (2025). Chatgpt in academic writing: A scientometric analysis of literature published between 2022 and 2023. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 20(3):131–148.
Lin, L. H. and Morrison, B. (2021). Challenges in academic writing: Perspectives of engineering faculty and l2 postgraduate research students. English for Specific Purposes, 63:59–70.
Lo, C. K. (2023). What is the impact of chatgpt on education? a rapid review of the literature. Education sciences, 13(4):410.
Lonka, K., Hietajärvi, L., Hakkarainen, K., Munter, T., Palonen, T., and Salmela-Aro, K. (2019). The challenges of doctoral writing: Experiences of Finnish PhD students. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(7):1019–1036.
Lu, X. and Wang, C. (2022). A systematic review of students’ self-regulated learning in technology-enhanced learning environments. Education and Information Technologies, 27(2):1825–1862.
Luitse, D. and Denkena, W. (2021). The great transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of ai. Big Data & Society, 8(2):20539517211047734.
Maher, M. A., Timmerman, B. C., Feldon, D. F., and Strickland, D. (2014). Factors affecting the occurrence of faculty-doctoral student co-authorship. The Journal of Higher Education, 85(1):121–149.
Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., and Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: guided by information power. Qualitative health research, 26(13):1753–1760.
McAlpine, L. and Amundsen, C., editors (2011). Doctoral education: Research-based strategies for doctoral students, supervisors and administrators. Springer Science & Business Media.
McLaughlin, J. E., Roth, M. T., Glatt, D. M., Gharkholonarehe, N., Davidson, C. A., Griffin, L. M., et al. (2013). The flipped classroom: A course redesign to foster learning and engagement in a health professions school. Academic Medicine, 89(2):236–243.
McRell, A. S., Wilson, B. L., and Levkoff, S. E. (2021). Writing skills development for graduate studies and career readiness in science and aging fields: A case study approach. Frontiers in public health, 9:727064.
Mienye, I. D., Jere, N., Obaido, G., Ogunruku, O. O., Esenogho, E., and Modisane, C. (2025). Large language models: an overview of foundational architectures, recent trends, and a new taxonomy. Discover Applied Sciences, 7(9):1027.
Ngulube, P. (2019). Mapping methodological issues in knowledge management research, 2009–2014. International Journal of Knowledge Management (IJKM), 15(1):85–100.
North, S. (2005). Different values, different skills? A comparison of essay writing by students from arts and science backgrounds. Studies in Higher Education, 30(5):517–533.
Odena, O. and Burgess, H. (2017). How doctoral students and graduates describe facilitating experiences and strategies for their thesis writing learning process: A qualitative approach. Studies in Higher Education, 42(3):572–590.
Peláez-Sánchez, S., Jordano, M., Freire, T., Verdugo-Castro, S., and Sánchez-Gómez, M. C. (2024). Perceptions of university students on the use of ChatGPT in education. Education Sciences, 14(1):94.
Peña-Lima, C., Dildine, T. C., and Lee, R. (2026). Three tips for scientific writing: a guide for graduate students. Nature.
Polastri, P. C., Linhalis, F., and dos Reis, J. C. (2026). Conjunto de dados e materiais pedagógicos sobre o uso de inteligência artificial generativa na escrita científica para pós-graduação. Repositório de Dados de Pesquisa da Unicamp (REDU). DOI: 10.25824/redu/BLSSTA.
Pololi, L. H., Knight, S. M., Dennis, K., and Frankel, R. M. (2011). Helping medical school faculty realize their dreams: An innovative, collaborative mentoring program. Academic Medicine, 77(5):377–384.
Ren, J. and Wang, W. (2025). Assisting research proposal writing with large language models: Evaluation and refinement. arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09709.
Scalfani, V. F., Maceli, K. M., Towell, J. L., Turner, J. A., and Williams, A. E. (2016). Filling the gap: A program to assist graduate students with research and scholarly publication. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 16(1):125–145.
Shah, J., Shah, A., and Pietrobon, R. (2009). Scientific writing of novice researchers: what difficulties and encouragements do they encounter? Academic Medicine, 84(4):511–516.
Shopovski, J., Mohdali, R., and Marolov, D. (2025). Revolutionizing peer review: A comparative analysis of chatgpt and human review reports in scientific publishing.
Sollaci, L. B. and Pereira, M. G. (2004). The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (imrad) structure: a fifty-year survey. Journal of the medical library association, 92(3):364.
Song, C. and Song, Y. (2023). Enhancing academic writing skills and motivation: assessing the efficacy of chatgpt in ai-assisted language learning for efl students. Frontiers in psychology, 14:1260843.
Su, J. and Yang, W. (2023). Unlocking the power of ChatGPT: A framework for applying generative AI in education. ECNU Review of Education, 6(3):355–366.
Sullivan, M., Kelly, A., and McLaughlan, P. (2023). ChatGPT in higher education: Considerations for academic integrity and student learning. Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 6(1).
Tashakkori, A., Johnson, R. B., and Teddlie, C. (2020). Foundations of mixed methods research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. Sage publications.
Tlili, A., Shehata, B., Adarkwah, M. A., Bozkurt, A., Hickey, D. T., Huang, R., and Agyemang, B. (2023). What if the devil is my guardian angel: ChatGPT as a case study of using chatbots in education. Smart Learning Environments, 10(1):15.
van Dis, E. A., Bollen, J., Zuidema, W., van Rooij, R., and Bockting, C. L. (2023). ChatGPT: Five priorities for research. Nature, 614(7947):224–226.
Vasileiou, K., Barnett, J., Thorpe, S., and Young, T. (2018). Characterising and justifying sample size sufficiency in interview-based studies: systematic analysis of qualitative health research over a 15-year period. BMC medical research methodology, 18(1):148.
Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., Kaiser, Ł., and Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need. Advances in neural information processing systems, 30.
Wu, J. (2011). Improving the writing of research papers: Imrad and beyond. Landscape Ecology, 26(10):1345–1349.
Zhou, Y., Zhou, Y., and Machtmes, K. (2024). Mixed methods integration strategies used in education: A systematic review. Methodological Innovations, 17(1):41–49.
Brown, T. B., Mann, B., Ryder, N., Subbiah, M., Kaplan, J., Dhariwal, P., et al. (2020). Language models are few-shot learners. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 33:1877–1901.
Cahill, L., Miller-Cochran, S., Pantoja, V., and Rodrigo, R. L. (2008). Graduate student writing groups as peer mentoring communities. Stories of mentoring: Theory and praxis, pages 153–58.
Creswell, J. W. and Clark, V. L. P. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage publications.
Daza, V., Martí-Testón, A., Casañ, M. J., and Castelló-Cogollos, L. (2024). Student perceptions of generative artificial intelligence in higher education: A systematic review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 21(1):52.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E. L., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A. K., et al. (2023). Opinion paper: ”so what if ChatGPT wrote it?”Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 71:102642.
Fanguy, M., Costley, J., Baldwin, M., Lange, C., and Wang, H. (2019). Diversity in STEM: Influence of demographic characteristics on learning preferences and educational technology use. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 28(6):556–568.
Gopee, N. and Deane, M. (2013). Strategies for successful academic writing: Institutional and non-institutional support for students. Nurse Education Today, 33(12):1624–1631.
Granjeiro, J. M., Cury, A. A. D. B., Cury, J. A., Bueno, M., Sousa-Neto, M. D., and Estrela, C. (2025). The future of scientific writing: Ai tools, benefits, and ethical implications. Brazilian Dental Journal, 36:e25–6471.
Gupta, S., Jaiswal, A., Paramasivam, A., and Kotecha, J. (2022). Academic writing challenges and supports: Perspectives of international doctoral students and their supervisors. In Frontiers in education, volume 7, page 891534. Frontiers Media SA.
Hwang, G.-J. (2014). Definition, framework and research issues of smart learning environments-a context-aware ubiquitous learning perspective. Smart Learning Environments, 1(1):1–14.
Imran, M. and Almusharraf, N. (2023). Analyzing the role of chatgpt as a writing assistant at higher education level: A systematic review of the literature. Contemporary Educational Technology, 15(4):ep464.
Inouye, K. and McAlpine, L. (2019). Developing academic identity: A review of the literature on doctoral writing and feedback. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14:1–31.
Johnson, R. B. and Christensen, L. B. (2024). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Sage publications.
Kasneci, E., Seßler, K., Küchemann, S., Bannert, M., Dementieva, D., Fischer, F., Gasser, U., Groh, G., Günnemann, S., Hüllermeier, E., et al. (2023). Chatgpt for good? on opportunities and challenges of large language models for education. Learning and individual differences, 103:102274.
Ketsman, O., Droog, A., and Qazi, S. (2025). Mapping the prevalence of mixed methods research in educational technology journals. Computers & education, 226:105207.
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X.-H., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., and Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on chatgpt: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an ai assistant for essay writing task. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872, 4.
Kusmaryono, I., Wijayanti, D., and Maharani, H. R. (2022). Number of response options, reliability, validity, and potential bias in the use of the likert scale education and social science research: A literature review. International Journal of Educational Methodology, 8(4):625–637.
Lax, J. R. (2014). Engaging graduate students in the practice of authoring scientific texts. International Journal of Science Education, 36(10):1636–1662.
Lendvai, G. F. (2025). Chatgpt in academic writing: A scientometric analysis of literature published between 2022 and 2023. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 20(3):131–148.
Lin, L. H. and Morrison, B. (2021). Challenges in academic writing: Perspectives of engineering faculty and l2 postgraduate research students. English for Specific Purposes, 63:59–70.
Lo, C. K. (2023). What is the impact of chatgpt on education? a rapid review of the literature. Education sciences, 13(4):410.
Lonka, K., Hietajärvi, L., Hakkarainen, K., Munter, T., Palonen, T., and Salmela-Aro, K. (2019). The challenges of doctoral writing: Experiences of Finnish PhD students. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(7):1019–1036.
Lu, X. and Wang, C. (2022). A systematic review of students’ self-regulated learning in technology-enhanced learning environments. Education and Information Technologies, 27(2):1825–1862.
Luitse, D. and Denkena, W. (2021). The great transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of ai. Big Data & Society, 8(2):20539517211047734.
Maher, M. A., Timmerman, B. C., Feldon, D. F., and Strickland, D. (2014). Factors affecting the occurrence of faculty-doctoral student co-authorship. The Journal of Higher Education, 85(1):121–149.
Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., and Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: guided by information power. Qualitative health research, 26(13):1753–1760.
McAlpine, L. and Amundsen, C., editors (2011). Doctoral education: Research-based strategies for doctoral students, supervisors and administrators. Springer Science & Business Media.
McLaughlin, J. E., Roth, M. T., Glatt, D. M., Gharkholonarehe, N., Davidson, C. A., Griffin, L. M., et al. (2013). The flipped classroom: A course redesign to foster learning and engagement in a health professions school. Academic Medicine, 89(2):236–243.
McRell, A. S., Wilson, B. L., and Levkoff, S. E. (2021). Writing skills development for graduate studies and career readiness in science and aging fields: A case study approach. Frontiers in public health, 9:727064.
Mienye, I. D., Jere, N., Obaido, G., Ogunruku, O. O., Esenogho, E., and Modisane, C. (2025). Large language models: an overview of foundational architectures, recent trends, and a new taxonomy. Discover Applied Sciences, 7(9):1027.
Ngulube, P. (2019). Mapping methodological issues in knowledge management research, 2009–2014. International Journal of Knowledge Management (IJKM), 15(1):85–100.
North, S. (2005). Different values, different skills? A comparison of essay writing by students from arts and science backgrounds. Studies in Higher Education, 30(5):517–533.
Odena, O. and Burgess, H. (2017). How doctoral students and graduates describe facilitating experiences and strategies for their thesis writing learning process: A qualitative approach. Studies in Higher Education, 42(3):572–590.
Peláez-Sánchez, S., Jordano, M., Freire, T., Verdugo-Castro, S., and Sánchez-Gómez, M. C. (2024). Perceptions of university students on the use of ChatGPT in education. Education Sciences, 14(1):94.
Peña-Lima, C., Dildine, T. C., and Lee, R. (2026). Three tips for scientific writing: a guide for graduate students. Nature.
Polastri, P. C., Linhalis, F., and dos Reis, J. C. (2026). Conjunto de dados e materiais pedagógicos sobre o uso de inteligência artificial generativa na escrita científica para pós-graduação. Repositório de Dados de Pesquisa da Unicamp (REDU). DOI: 10.25824/redu/BLSSTA.
Pololi, L. H., Knight, S. M., Dennis, K., and Frankel, R. M. (2011). Helping medical school faculty realize their dreams: An innovative, collaborative mentoring program. Academic Medicine, 77(5):377–384.
Ren, J. and Wang, W. (2025). Assisting research proposal writing with large language models: Evaluation and refinement. arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09709.
Scalfani, V. F., Maceli, K. M., Towell, J. L., Turner, J. A., and Williams, A. E. (2016). Filling the gap: A program to assist graduate students with research and scholarly publication. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 16(1):125–145.
Shah, J., Shah, A., and Pietrobon, R. (2009). Scientific writing of novice researchers: what difficulties and encouragements do they encounter? Academic Medicine, 84(4):511–516.
Shopovski, J., Mohdali, R., and Marolov, D. (2025). Revolutionizing peer review: A comparative analysis of chatgpt and human review reports in scientific publishing.
Sollaci, L. B. and Pereira, M. G. (2004). The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (imrad) structure: a fifty-year survey. Journal of the medical library association, 92(3):364.
Song, C. and Song, Y. (2023). Enhancing academic writing skills and motivation: assessing the efficacy of chatgpt in ai-assisted language learning for efl students. Frontiers in psychology, 14:1260843.
Su, J. and Yang, W. (2023). Unlocking the power of ChatGPT: A framework for applying generative AI in education. ECNU Review of Education, 6(3):355–366.
Sullivan, M., Kelly, A., and McLaughlan, P. (2023). ChatGPT in higher education: Considerations for academic integrity and student learning. Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 6(1).
Tashakkori, A., Johnson, R. B., and Teddlie, C. (2020). Foundations of mixed methods research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. Sage publications.
Tlili, A., Shehata, B., Adarkwah, M. A., Bozkurt, A., Hickey, D. T., Huang, R., and Agyemang, B. (2023). What if the devil is my guardian angel: ChatGPT as a case study of using chatbots in education. Smart Learning Environments, 10(1):15.
van Dis, E. A., Bollen, J., Zuidema, W., van Rooij, R., and Bockting, C. L. (2023). ChatGPT: Five priorities for research. Nature, 614(7947):224–226.
Vasileiou, K., Barnett, J., Thorpe, S., and Young, T. (2018). Characterising and justifying sample size sufficiency in interview-based studies: systematic analysis of qualitative health research over a 15-year period. BMC medical research methodology, 18(1):148.
Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., Kaiser, Ł., and Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need. Advances in neural information processing systems, 30.
Wu, J. (2011). Improving the writing of research papers: Imrad and beyond. Landscape Ecology, 26(10):1345–1349.
Zhou, Y., Zhou, Y., and Machtmes, K. (2024). Mixed methods integration strategies used in education: A systematic review. Methodological Innovations, 17(1):41–49.
Publicado
19/07/2026
Como Citar
POLASTRI, Paulo César; LINHALIS, Flávia; REIS, Julio Cesar dos.
Assessing Graduate Students’ Perceptions in Exploring Generative AI for Scientific Writing. In: WORKSHOP SOBRE AS IMPLICAÇÕES DA COMPUTAÇÃO NA SOCIEDADE (WICS), 7. , 2026, Gramado/RS.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2026
.
p. 44-61.
ISSN 2763-8707.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wics.2026.23311.
