Calculation of Time Saved by Using AI to Perform
a Common Technical Writing Assignment 

Michael Alley, Andrea Khouzami, Kendall Mattson
24 April 2026*
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Introduction

This page presents results of faculty and student surveys on the use of AI to assist in technical writing assignments. Presented here are 


Methods

This section presents the process that we use, including the assumptions, for using AI as much as possible to create

Assumptions. The following are assumptions
  1. quality of product has to match that of assignments that earned A's in the course
  2. product does not contain any hallucination and gives credit to appropriate sources



Selecting the Topic. Text
1. chose topic that I knew something about
2. a topic to be interesting to me but also the reader (nontechnical writing instructor)
3. a topic that would fulfill the assignment
4. a topic that will be new for the instructor
Assumption: thinking about topic 
One thing is that we could ask AI what it thinks


Researching and Drafting.

Incorporating Graphics.

Revising and Drafting. 
Results

Presented here will be the three descriptions
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​References
  1. Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Springer, 2018).​​
  2. Michael Alley, "Section 1: Grammar," Writing as an Engineer or Scientist (1997).​
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* Except for the AI example in Figure 1, AI was not used to draft or revise this webpage.