Using Artificial Augmentation Intelligence for the Next Generation of Scholarly Writing Tools

Instructional designers and programmers recognize that Artificial Augmentation Intelligence (AAI) is moving beyond the realm of science fiction and is becoming a reality. An AAI knowledge based application is currently being used in the United States health care system as well as the business sector. Given the nature of AAI it is plausible to use what has been learned in health care and business in educational tool based applications.  The primary focus of the qualitative exploratory single case study was to take one aspect of existing academic tools (scholarly writing) and examine the strengths and weaknesses of each with the end result of developing an AAI based prototype Scholarly Writing Software (SWS) application based on IBM Watson’s architecture. Results from analysis of 20 subject mater expert participants demonstrated that AAI has the potential to interact with a word processing program (e.g. Microsoft Word™) to provide real time suggestions and recommendations to improve scholarly writing, including syntactic and semantic recognition.  It is possible to program several of the writing style rules (APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.), into an AAI scholarly writing program. Success of the SWS prototype may lead to additional AAI computer/human interaction programs for both K-12 and higher education.

Keywords Artificial Augmentation Intelligence in Education – Cognitive Computing- Knowledge Based Systems for Educational Tools