A ChatGPT Assisted Reading Protocol for Undergraduate Research Students Engaging with Biophysics Literature

Abstract

A major challenge for undergraduate students engaged in research is reading scientific literature. This is especially true for students engaged in biophysics research, where many of the concepts, definitions, and experimental methodologies discussed may be beyond the material covered in standard undergraduate courses. Without specific guidance on how to read journal articles, students can become overwhelmed, which may lead to students reading fewer papers and not engaging with the scientific literature related to their research. To help undergraduate students effectively engage with scientific papers, we have developed a guided reading protocol that combines pre-reading strategies, structured notetaking, and the use of ChatGPT. Using ChatGPT in this protocol allows students to clarify unfamiliar terms and concepts in an interactive way that helps them to integrate the paper's content into their own understanding. To test the impact of this protocol, participants in this study were given an initial survey to determine their comfort and experience with reading scientific literature. After this they were given an abridged biophysics paper and the ChatGPT assisted guided reading protocol. The ChatGPT transcripts were analyzed using open coding and the students were given a post-study survey to determine how they felt about their experience using ChatGPT. We found that most students do not appear to engage with the literature regularly, which may be due to barriers they encounter in terms of new and unknown content. Analyzing their conversations with the chatbot, we observed that students asked for definitions, explanations of unknown concepts, summaries of text or their own understanding, and simplifications of the text. Overall, students reported in the post-implementation survey that using ChatGPT was a positive experience and all students reported that they expected to use ChatGPT in the future when reading scientific literature. From this work, we believe that this new chatbot assisted reading protocol may be a way to keep novice biophysics students from becoming discouraged when they begin reading scientific literature and help keep them engaged with the current literature in the field.