Poetry, Creativity, and ChatGPT

Craig J. Gunn

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: AI and Tools for Transdisciplinary Work
Tagged Division: Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--47851
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47851
Download Count: 12

Paper Authors

biography

Craig J. Gunn Michigan State University

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Craig Gunn is the Director of the Communication Program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University. He integrates communication skill activity into all courses within the mechanical Engineering program. He has co-authored a number of text books on communication and recently edited a compilation of poetry written solely by engineering students.

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Abstract

When working with young engineering students at the junior level one must realize that they are focused completely on the task at hand, placing themselves in a career that makes them chemical, mechanical, electrical, or one of the various other forms of being an engineer. They have usually spent the first two years of college rushing through all the humanities, social studies, and composition classes that they can to remove those from their radar. Now they have arrived at the time when many colleges accept them into the brother/sister hood of the profession. They come with a wide perspective on engineering, a number of mathematics courses, and in many cases nothing more. They seem to understand all that engineering holds but fail to understand what is important in their lives as engineers. In many cases they fell into a trap as freshmen when some evil force behind the curtain told them that they were not creative and creativity was a strange item practiced by those characters in departments like Theatre and English. Over the years all incoming junior mechanical engineers at XXX have been writing poetry, not to punish them or to drive them to the dark side, but to allow them to widen their perspective on the world in which engineers inhabit with other people who are just as creative as they. Yes, all people have an enormous amount of creativity. It simply takes a gentle push or sometimes a swift kick to open their minds to their creative selves. Writing poetry can be a fascinating and creative endeavor that allows them to explore a different side of their thinking. Poetry is a medium that encourages the expression of emotions, ideas, and experiences in a concise and artistic manner. Over the many years, thousands of poems have been created by engineers in the junior mechanical engineering class at XXX. They all write under the umbrella that all work is creative. There are no judgment calls that this poem or that poem is better than any other. They are presented as creative works and allowed to be viewed as liked by some and not so liked by others. No writer is left aside. All are writers and all are creative. They find that there is an investigative nature of poetry. Poetry often involves wordplay, metaphors, and symbolism. They can investigate metaphorical language or unique ways to describe technical concepts. This can add depth and layers to their poems that they may not have tried before. This year we decided to try a new path for the students to follow. They began with the instruction to NOT use Chatgpt or any other AI to write their poems. They had to create what they could and hand that in. The next step was to take that work and put it in Chatgpt and create three more versions of their original work. In this paper we explore the use of Chatgpt to not create required work but to show that as a tool Chatgpt opens up the doors of new forms of creativity, student evaluation of their own work in comparison to the added tool of Chatgpt, and the avenues that a student can follow to create better and better work. We will reflect on the students’ comments about the writing of poetry, the evaluation process of their work as helped by Chatgpt, and the sense of accomplishment in what they have created.

Citation
Format

Gunn, C. J. (2024, June), Poetry, Creativity, and ChatGPT Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--47851

TY - CPAPER
AB - When working with young engineering students at the junior level one must realize that they are focused completely on the task at hand, placing themselves in a career that makes them chemical, mechanical, electrical, or one of the various other forms of being an engineer. They have usually spent the first two years of college rushing through all the humanities, social studies, and composition classes that they can to remove those from their radar. Now they have arrived at the time when many colleges accept them into the brother/sister hood of the profession. They come with a wide perspective on engineering, a number of mathematics courses, and in many cases nothing more. They seem to understand all that engineering holds but fail to understand what is important in their lives as engineers. In many cases they fell into a trap as freshmen when some evil force behind the curtain told them that they were not creative and creativity was a strange item practiced by those characters in departments like Theatre and English. Over the years all incoming junior mechanical engineers at XXX have been writing poetry, not to punish them or to drive them to the dark side, but to allow them to widen their perspective on the world in which engineers inhabit with other people who are just as creative as they. Yes, all people have an enormous amount of creativity. It simply takes a gentle push or sometimes a swift kick to open their minds to their creative selves. Writing poetry can be a fascinating and creative endeavor that allows them to explore a different side of their thinking. Poetry is a medium that encourages the expression of emotions, ideas, and experiences in a concise and artistic manner. Over the many years, thousands of poems have been created by engineers in the junior mechanical engineering class at XXX. They all write under the umbrella that all work is creative. There are no judgment calls that this poem or that poem is better than any other. They are presented as creative works and allowed to be viewed as liked by some and not so liked by others. No writer is left aside. All are writers and all are creative. They find that there is an investigative nature of poetry. Poetry often involves wordplay, metaphors, and symbolism. They can investigate metaphorical language or unique ways to describe technical concepts. This can add depth and layers to their poems that they may not have tried before. This year we decided to try a new path for the students to follow. They began with the instruction to NOT use Chatgpt or any other AI to write their poems. They had to create what they could and hand that in. The next step was to take that work and put it in Chatgpt and create three more versions of their original work. In this paper we explore the use of Chatgpt to not create required work but to show that as a tool Chatgpt opens up the doors of new forms of creativity, student evaluation of their own work in comparison to the added tool of Chatgpt, and the avenues that a student can follow to create better and better work. We will reflect on the students’ comments about the writing of poetry, the evaluation process of their work as helped by Chatgpt, and the sense of accomplishment in what they have created.
AU - Craig J. Gunn
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Poetry, Creativity, and ChatGPT
UR - https://peer.asee.org/47851
DO - 10.18260/1-2--47851
ER -