Postgraduate students' voices on leveraging Grammarly as an AI-powered tool in academic writing

• Published in: Journal of education (Durban) no. 98; pp. 103 - 123
• Main Author: van Wyk, Micheal M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Portuguese
• Published: University of KwaZulu-Natal on behalf of the South African Education Research Association 28.03.2025
• Subjects: Education & Educational Research; Education, Scientific Disciplines; Education, Special; exploratory mixed-methods design; academic writing; artificial intelligence; constructivist-interpretative perspective; postgraduate students; Grammarly
• ISSN: 0259-479X; 2520-9868; 2520-9868
• DOI: 10.17159/2520-9868/i98a06

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered writing assistant tools such as Grammarly have exponentially changed the landscape of teacher education, raising the question: "How can lecturers and students leverage the potential of these tools?" They have also highlighted the need to investigate their use in an open-distance e-learning context, which prompted an investigation of the views of postgraduate students about Grammarly as a specific tool for academic writing in an online course. This exploratory mixed-methods design study was grounded in a pragmatic perspective. Six participants were selected to participate in semi-structured online interviews via Microsoft Teams. The online interviews were recorded, transcribed, and downloaded. A sample of 34 respondents completed our highly reliable (α < .89) self-designed online questionnaire. To analyse the data, NVivo 14, was employed, data were imported, and the themes were generated as guided by the NVivo thematic analysis process. To ensure the trustworthiness of the data sets and identified themes, the participation validation process was used to measure the credibility of the data. Participants noted Grammarly's usefulness in promoting academic writing and enriching teaching and learning experiences. An awareness of ethical considerations for using Grammarly and other generative AI (GenAI)-powered writing assistant tools is essential before adopting them.