AI Chatbot to Assist Students Applying APA (7th Edition) Style in Their Academic Writing in a Polytechnic in Singapore

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a pilot project that utilized an artificial intelligence chatbot named the APABot to help 24 students from the Diploma in Psychology Studies apply APA (7th edition) style in their 400- to 500-word essay. This writing task was a requirement for Communication and Information Literacy, a fundamental subject for all first-year students in Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore. The four research questions were as follows: 1) How did the students respond to the APABot? 2) What strategies did the students use to learn from the APABot? 3) How did the APABot assist students to comply with the APA (7th edition) conventions in their writing? and 4) What were the characteristics of successful self-regulators using the APABot? Data from user logs, the number and types of errors, and a survey provided insights to the above questions.