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The pedagogical impact of AI-Assisted idea generation on self-efficacy and idea development skills in general foundation program students' research-based essay

Foundation Program students often struggle to generate research ideas and organise their thoughts when writing research-based essays, which can undermine their confidence and academic performance. Traditional assessment methods provide limited insight into students' independent development of ideas. However, recent advances in educational technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), offer new opportunities to support learning. This study aims to investigate the pedagogical impact of AI-assisted idea ge…

By the Truvace desk1 min read1 sourcePeer-reviewedTRV-2026-1835· cite & verify
The pedagogical impact of AI-Assisted idea generation on self-efficacy and idea development skills in general foundation program students' research-based essay
Students in Professor Patricia Fancher's UCSB Writing Program course work with wiki markup by Samantha (Wiki Ed). CC BY-SA 4.0 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

In brief

A study of General Foundation Program students tested whether using ChatGPT to brainstorm, outline and refine ideas could help with research-based essay writing. Participants took a pre-test and post-test around a 4-6 week intervention, and the authors report gains in both confidence and idea development.

The finding matters because students in foundation programs often struggle to generate and organise research ideas, which can weaken confidence and performance. The evidence is limited by the small, single-group design with no comparison group, so it cannot show that the AI tool alone caused the gains or that results would hold elsewhere.

Main points

  1. The sample was 25 randomly selected General Foundation Program students.
  2. The design was a quantitative single-group pre-test and post-test over 4-6 weeks.
  3. Self-efficacy was measured with a structured questionnaire.
  4. Idea development was assessed with a writing rubric and analysed with paired-sample comparison.

The gain

After a 4-6 week intervention using ChatGPT for brainstorming, outlining and refining ideas, 25 foundation program students showed improved self-efficacy and idea development in research-based essays.

The rundown

The study starts from a stated problem: foundation students often find it hard to generate research ideas and organise their thoughts for research-based essays, which can undermine confidence and academic performance.

Students used ChatGPT as their main AI tool for brainstorming, outlining and refining ideas during the intervention. Outcomes were self-efficacy, measured with a questionnaire, and idea development, scored with a rubric.

The authors report improvement in both outcomes and conclude that integrating AI tools into writing instruction can strengthen student confidence and performance. The abstract gives no effect sizes.

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewedInternational Journal of Teacher Education Research Studies (IJTERS)2026-10-17

The debate