how to introduce an assignment examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)   

The introduction of an essay plays a critical role in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. It sets the stage for the rest of the essay, establishes the tone and style, and motivates the reader to continue reading. 

Table of Contents

What is an essay introduction , what to include in an essay introduction, how to create an essay structure , step-by-step process for writing an essay introduction , how to write an introduction paragraph , how to write a hook for your essay , how to include background information , how to write a thesis statement .

• Argumentative Essay Introduction Example: 
• Expository Essay Introduction Example 

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Check and revise – checklist for essay introduction , key takeaways , frequently asked questions .

An introduction is the opening section of an essay, paper, or other written work. It introduces the topic and provides background information, context, and an overview of what the reader can expect from the rest of the work. 1 The key is to be concise and to the point, providing enough information to engage the reader without delving into excessive detail. 

The essay introduction is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire piece and provides the reader with a roadmap of what to expect. Here are key elements to include in your essay introduction: 

• Hook : Start with an attention-grabbing statement or question to engage the reader. This could be a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote. 
• Background information : Provide context and background information to help the reader understand the topic. This can include historical information, definitions of key terms, or an overview of the current state of affairs related to your topic. 
• Thesis statement : Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic. Your thesis should be concise and specific, providing a clear direction for your essay. 

Before we get into how to write an essay introduction, we need to know how it is structured. The structure of an essay is crucial for organizing your thoughts and presenting them clearly and logically. It is divided as follows: 2  

• Introduction:  The introduction should grab the reader’s attention with a hook, provide context, and include a thesis statement that presents the main argument or purpose of the essay.  
• Body:  The body should consist of focused paragraphs that support your thesis statement using evidence and analysis. Each paragraph should concentrate on a single central idea or argument and provide evidence, examples, or analysis to back it up.  
• Conclusion:  The conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis differently. End with a final statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Avoid new information or arguments. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write an essay introduction: 

• Start with a Hook : Begin your introduction paragraph with an attention-grabbing statement, question, quote, or anecdote related to your topic. The hook should pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading. 
• Provide Background Information : This helps the reader understand the relevance and importance of the topic. 
• State Your Thesis Statement : The last sentence is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be clear, concise, and directly address the topic of your essay. 
• Preview the Main Points : This gives the reader an idea of what to expect and how you will support your thesis. 
• Keep it Concise and Clear : Avoid going into too much detail or including information not directly relevant to your topic. 
• Revise : Revise your introduction after you’ve written the rest of your essay to ensure it aligns with your final argument. 

Here’s an example of an essay introduction paragraph about the importance of education: 

Education is often viewed as a fundamental human right and a key social and economic development driver. As Nelson Mandela once famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is the key to unlocking a wide range of opportunities and benefits for individuals, societies, and nations. In today’s constantly evolving world, education has become even more critical. It has expanded beyond traditional classroom learning to include digital and remote learning, making education more accessible and convenient. This essay will delve into the importance of education in empowering individuals to achieve their dreams, improving societies by promoting social justice and equality, and driving economic growth by developing a skilled workforce and promoting innovation. 

This introduction paragraph example includes a hook (the quote by Nelson Mandela), provides some background information on education, and states the thesis statement (the importance of education). 

This is one of the key steps in how to write an essay introduction. Crafting a compelling hook is vital because it sets the tone for your entire essay and determines whether your readers will stay interested. A good hook draws the reader in and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.  

• Avoid Dry Fact : Instead of simply stating a bland fact, try to make it engaging and relevant to your topic. For example, if you’re writing about the benefits of exercise, you could start with a startling statistic like, “Did you know that regular exercise can increase your lifespan by up to seven years?” 
• Avoid Using a Dictionary Definition : While definitions can be informative, they’re not always the most captivating way to start an essay. Instead, try to use a quote, anecdote, or provocative question to pique the reader’s interest. For instance, if you’re writing about freedom, you could begin with a quote from a famous freedom fighter or philosopher. 
• Do Not Just State a Fact That the Reader Already Knows : This ties back to the first point—your hook should surprise or intrigue the reader. For Here’s an introduction paragraph example, if you’re writing about climate change, you could start with a thought-provoking statement like, “Despite overwhelming evidence, many people still refuse to believe in the reality of climate change.” 

Including background information in the introduction section of your essay is important to provide context and establish the relevance of your topic. When writing the background information, you can follow these steps: 

• Start with a General Statement:  Begin with a general statement about the topic and gradually narrow it down to your specific focus. For example, when discussing the impact of social media, you can begin by making a broad statement about social media and its widespread use in today’s society, as follows: “Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of users worldwide.” 
• Define Key Terms : Define any key terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers but are essential for understanding your argument. 
• Provide Relevant Statistics:  Use statistics or facts to highlight the significance of the issue you’re discussing. For instance, “According to a report by Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.” 
• Discuss the Evolution:  Mention previous research or studies that have been conducted on the topic, especially those that are relevant to your argument. Mention key milestones or developments that have shaped its current impact. You can also outline some of the major effects of social media. For example, you can briefly describe how social media has evolved, including positives such as increased connectivity and issues like cyberbullying and privacy concerns. 
• Transition to Your Thesis:  Use the background information to lead into your thesis statement, which should clearly state the main argument or purpose of your essay. For example, “Given its pervasive influence, it is crucial to examine the impact of social media on mental health.” 

A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, or other type of academic writing. It appears near the end of the introduction. Here’s how to write a thesis statement: 

• Identify the topic:  Start by identifying the topic of your essay. For example, if your essay is about the importance of exercise for overall health, your topic is “exercise.” 
• State your position:  Next, state your position or claim about the topic. This is the main argument or point you want to make. For example, if you believe that regular exercise is crucial for maintaining good health, your position could be: “Regular exercise is essential for maintaining good health.” 
• Support your position:  Provide a brief overview of the reasons or evidence that support your position. These will be the main points of your essay. For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of exercise, you could mention the physical health benefits, mental health benefits, and the role of exercise in disease prevention. 
• Make it specific:  Ensure your thesis statement clearly states what you will discuss in your essay. For example, instead of saying, “Exercise is good for you,” you could say, “Regular exercise, including cardiovascular and strength training, can improve overall health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.” 

Examples of essay introduction 

Here are examples of essay introductions for different types of essays: 

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:  

Topic: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? 

“The question of whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has sparked nationwide debate. While some argue that 16-year-olds lack the requisite maturity and knowledge to make informed decisions, others argue that doing so would imbue young people with agency and give them a voice in shaping their future.” 

Expository Essay Introduction Example  

Topic: The benefits of regular exercise 

“In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of regular exercise cannot be overstated. From improving physical health to boosting mental well-being, the benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching. This essay will examine the various advantages of regular exercise and provide tips on incorporating it into your daily routine.” 

Text: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee 

“Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is a timeless classic that explores themes of racism, injustice, and morality in the American South. Through the eyes of young Scout Finch, the reader is taken on a journey that challenges societal norms and forces characters to confront their prejudices. This essay will analyze the novel’s use of symbolism, character development, and narrative structure to uncover its deeper meaning and relevance to contemporary society.” 

• Engaging and Relevant First Sentence : The opening sentence captures the reader’s attention and relates directly to the topic. 
• Background Information : Enough background information is introduced to provide context for the thesis statement. 
• Definition of Important Terms : Key terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to the audience or are central to the argument are defined. 
• Clear Thesis Statement : The thesis statement presents the main point or argument of the essay. 
• Relevance to Main Body : Everything in the introduction directly relates to and sets up the discussion in the main body of the essay. 

Writing a strong introduction is crucial for setting the tone and context of your essay. Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3  

• Hook the Reader : Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote. 
• Provide Background : Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion. 
• Thesis Statement : State your thesis, which is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be concise, clear, and specific. 
• Preview the Structure : Outline the main points or arguments to help the reader understand the organization of your essay. 
• Keep it Concise : Avoid including unnecessary details or information not directly related to your thesis. 
• Revise and Edit : Revise your introduction to ensure clarity, coherence, and relevance. Check for grammar and spelling errors. 
• Seek Feedback : Get feedback from peers or instructors to improve your introduction further. 

The purpose of an essay introduction is to give an overview of the topic, context, and main ideas of the essay. It is meant to engage the reader, establish the tone for the rest of the essay, and introduce the thesis statement or central argument.  

An essay introduction typically ranges from 5-10% of the total word count. For example, in a 1,000-word essay, the introduction would be roughly 50-100 words. However, the length can vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the overall length of the essay.

An essay introduction is critical in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. To ensure its effectiveness, consider incorporating these key elements: a compelling hook, background information, a clear thesis statement, an outline of the essay’s scope, a smooth transition to the body, and optional signposting sentences.  

The process of writing an essay introduction is not necessarily straightforward, but there are several strategies that can be employed to achieve this end. When experiencing difficulty initiating the process, consider the following techniques: begin with an anecdote, a quotation, an image, a question, or a startling fact to pique the reader’s interest. It may also be helpful to consider the five W’s of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.   For instance, an anecdotal opening could be structured as follows: “As I ascended the stage, momentarily blinded by the intense lights, I could sense the weight of a hundred eyes upon me, anticipating my next move. The topic of discussion was climate change, a subject I was passionate about, and it was my first public speaking event. Little did I know , that pivotal moment would not only alter my perspective but also chart my life’s course.” 

Crafting a compelling thesis statement for your introduction paragraph is crucial to grab your reader’s attention. To achieve this, avoid using overused phrases such as “In this paper, I will write about” or “I will focus on” as they lack originality. Instead, strive to engage your reader by substantiating your stance or proposition with a “so what” clause. While writing your thesis statement, aim to be precise, succinct, and clear in conveying your main argument.  

To create an effective essay introduction, ensure it is clear, engaging, relevant, and contains a concise thesis statement. It should transition smoothly into the essay and be long enough to cover necessary points but not become overwhelming. Seek feedback from peers or instructors to assess its effectiveness. 

References  

• Cui, L. (2022). Unit 6 Essay Introduction.  Building Academic Writing Skills . 
• West, H., Malcolm, G., Keywood, S., & Hill, J. (2019). Writing a successful essay.  Journal of Geography in Higher Education ,  43 (4), 609-617. 
• Beavers, M. E., Thoune, D. L., & McBeth, M. (2023). Bibliographic Essay: Reading, Researching, Teaching, and Writing with Hooks: A Queer Literacy Sponsorship. College English, 85(3), 230-242. 

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How To Write A Solid Assignment Introduction

By: Derek Jansen | December 2017

I’ll kick off this post by making a bold assertion:

The introduction chapter of your assignment is the single most important section in your entire assignment.

Yip. Not the analysis chapter. Not the recommendations chapter. The introduction chapter. Yip, that short 200/300/400-word chapter that so many students rush through to get to the meatier chapters.  Why do I say this? There are a few reasons:

It creates the first impression.

Apart from the executive summary (which some assignments don’t have), the introduction creates the very first impression on your marker. It sets the tone in terms of the quality of the assignment.

It introduces your industry.

You might have decades of experience in your industry – but your marker won’t. This means that the simplest concepts can be misunderstood (and thereby cost you marks) if not explained right at the beginning of your assignment. A good introduction lays the foundation so that the marker can understand your upcoming arguments.

It defines and justifies your topic.

The introduction, if developed correctly, clearly outlines what the assignment will be about (and what it won’t) and why that’s important (i.e. a justification). In other words, it makes it clear what the focus of the assignment will be about, and why that is worth investigating. This clarity and justification of the topic are essential to earning good marks and keeping you focused on the purpose of the assignment.

It clarifies your approach.

Beyond the what and why, a good introduction also briefly explains how you’ll approach the research, both from a theoretical and practical perspective. This lays a clear roadmap both for the marker and for yourself. For the marker, this improves the readability and digestibility of the document (which is essential for earning marks). And for you, this big-picture view of the approach keeps you from digressing into a useless analysis.

In short, a good introduction lays a solid foundation and a clear direction for the rest of your assignment. Hopefully, you’re convinced…

The 5 essential ingredients.

In this post, I’ll outline the key components of a strong introduction chapter/section. But first, I want to discuss the structure.

Some assignment briefs will provide a proposed structure which combines the introduction and analysis chapters. I always encourage my clients to split this up into two chapters, as it provides a clearer, more logical structure. You’ll see why once I discuss the core components.

#1 – The Four Ws

A logical starting point is to assume the marker knows nothing about your business . Make sure you cover the basics:

• Who – what is the name of the business? If its multiple words, you should take the opportunity to introduce an acronym here. Then, stick to the acronym throughout the rest of the assignment. It’s also good practice to provide a list of acronyms in the appendix.
• What – explain what the business does, in simple English. Avoid industry jargon and explain the basic operating model of the business.
• Where – explain where the business operates from and where its customers operate. If you have multiple offices and serve multiple markets, a visual representation can save you some words.
• When – mention the age of the business, and how many staff it employs. You can also note the ownership structure (private company, listed entity, JV, etc).

If you’re only going to focus on one country/branch/department, make mention of this now. Also, be sure to justify why you’re focusing on that (for example, due to limited access to data).

If done right, you will have now painted a very clear (but concise) picture of the organisation for the marker. The next step is to discuss the context that the business operates in.

#2 – A brief discussion of the context.

Now that you’ve introduced the business, you need to move towards identifying the key issue(s) that will form the focus of the assignment. To do this, you need to lay a context, which will then lead to the issue(s). This will vary between assignments, and could be something like:

• The entry of new competitors resulting in reduced market share (STR, SM)
• A merger leading to a culture clash and poor performance (MP)
• A corporate scandal resulting in reputation damage (R&R)
• Changing regulation leading to the opening of a new potential country market (IB)

In other words, you need to present a (brief) story of how the key issue(s) or opportunity has arisen – X has lead to Y, which caused Z.

#3 – Identification of the key issue and research question(s).

With the context set, you need to clearly state what the key issue(s) or opportunity is, and why this is worth investigating (for example, due to the financial impact if left unresolved). This is pretty straightforward, but it is a critical step often missed by students, and results in the marker questioning the quality of the entire assignment.

With the key issue identified, its time to lay out your research question(s). In other words, state in question format, what question(s) your assignment will seek to answer.

For example:

• “What has changed in Organisation X’s competitive context, and how should it best respond to ensure sustainable competitive advantage?”
• “Should Organisation X internationalise to Country Y?”
• “What segments exist within Industry X and which segment should Organisation Y target?”
• “Which digital business model should Organisation X adopt?”

By stating your research question(s) up front, you are providing a very clear, focused direction for your assignment, thereby reducing your risk of getting distracted by the shiny objects that will invariably pop up along the way. You are stating clearly what you will and won’t focus on, and ring-fencing the assignment to a manageable breadth. This is critically important for earning marks, as it allows you to go deep into a highly relevant set of theories and develop meaningful insights, rather than superficially fluttering with numerous less-relevant ones.

What’s critically important is that you achieve alignment between the context, the issue(s) and the research question(s). They should all flow in a logical fashion, as shown below. 

If you achieve this alignment, you have a rock-solid foundation for your assignment, and your marker will be crystal clear regarding your direction, and why you chose that direction.

#4 – A brief outline of your theoretical approach.

Now that you’ve made it clear what your assignment is aiming to achieve (i.e. what research question(s) it wants to answer), it is very good practice to briefly mention:

• How you will approach the analysis.
• What key theory you will draw on.

In other words, you should give the marker an indication of how you approached the analysis, and on what theoretical basis. For example:

“The report begins by briefly looking at the organisation’s broader strategy, as well as values using Schwartz’s model (1994). It then reviews stakeholders using Mitchell et al.’s framework (1997) and identifies a key group with which reputation needs to be managed to achieve strategic alignment. It then analyses antecedents, reputation, and outcomes of the said group using Money et al.’s (2012) RELATE framework. This is followed by proposed strategic actions.”

As you can see, this excerpt clearly outlines how the analysis was approached, and what key theory was used in the relevant sections. This gives the marker a big-picture view of the assignment, which aids the digestibility of the document.

#5 – A brief outline of your fieldwork.

Now that you’ve communicated the approach, structure and underpinning theory, it’s best practice to make a quick mention of your fieldwork. Yes, you’re typically supposed to collect some primary data (for example, undertake some semi-structured interviews or a survey), as well as secondary data (for example, review industry reports, company data, etc), for your assignments – especially in Stage 2 and 3 of the program. 

In this final section, you should very briefly outline what you did in this respect so that the marker can rest assured that your assignment is not an opinion piece. A quality assignment draws on multiple data sources to make well-informed, data-backed arguments. Show that you’ve done this, and be sure to refer the reader to the appendices for evidence of this work (for example, interview transcripts, survey results, etc.).

Lastly, make mention of your relationship with the business, and your broad responsibilities. Remember to keep this in third-person language. For example:

“The author is employed as the [INSERT YOUR TITLE] and is responsible for X, Y and Z.”

Let’s recap.

In this article, I’ve hopefully convinced you of the critical importance of writing a strong introduction chapter. I’ve also presented 5 essential ingredients that you should bake into your intro in every assignment. By incorporating these ingredients (ideally, in this order), you will set the foundation for a strong assignment.

To recap the 5 essentials:

• A (plain language) explanation of the organisation.
• A brief discussion of the context.
• Identification of the key issue and research question(s).
• A brief outline of your theoretical approach.
• A brief outline of your fieldwork and your professional position.

Informative and easy to apply advice…tx D

You’re welcome, Rishen 🙂

It is a very useful and understandable explanation of writing a research paper. Thank you so much for the sharing free such a useful example.

Yours sincerely Tara

This is really good, thank you.

Thanks for the feedback, Paul. Best of luck with your Henley MBA.

Very useful guide for the MBA. You mention that it’s good practice to use a range of sources to support arguments. If an assignment task isn’t that strategic (e.g. reviewing a process for a particular team within the business), can the assignment be supported purely by ‘fieldwork’ and models/theory? Thank you.

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• If you are writing in a new discipline, you should always make sure to ask about conventions and expectations for introductions, just as you would for any other aspect of the essay. For example, while it may be acceptable to write a two-paragraph (or longer) introduction for your papers in some courses, instructors in other disciplines, such as those in some Government courses, may expect a shorter introduction that includes a preview of the argument that will follow.  
• In some disciplines (Government, Economics, and others), it’s common to offer an overview in the introduction of what points you will make in your essay. In other disciplines, you will not be expected to provide this overview in your introduction.  
• Avoid writing a very general opening sentence. While it may be true that “Since the dawn of time, people have been telling love stories,” it won’t help you explain what’s interesting about your topic.  
• Avoid writing a “funnel” introduction in which you begin with a very broad statement about a topic and move to a narrow statement about that topic. Broad generalizations about a topic will not add to your readers’ understanding of your specific essay topic.  
• Avoid beginning with a dictionary definition of a term or concept you will be writing about. If the concept is complicated or unfamiliar to your readers, you will need to define it in detail later in your essay. If it’s not complicated, you can assume your readers already know the definition.  
• Avoid offering too much detail in your introduction that a reader could better understand later in the paper.
• picture_as_pdf Introductions

How to Write An Assignment Introduction Like A Pro

Assignments become a crucial part of students’ academic lives as they have to encounter writing assignments daily. Writing an assignment in itself is a big and tough task, but most students face problems in writing an introduction for such assignments. 

An introduction has to be precise and complete to give a brief about your assignment, and there is a fixed word limit for writing an introduction of an assignment. That is why the most searched question about the assignment is 

How To Write An Assignment Introduction!

Table of Contents

If you want to make sure that your assignment’s introduction is eye-catching and précis, then follow the following guidelines on how to write an introduction for an assignment.

What is the Assignment Introduction?

The introduction gives an outline of the whole paper. It is the presentation of key ideas and also the purpose of your work. The introduction tells the readers about what you are going to tell in the assignment. An introduction has its own grading rules as it is counted distinctly from the body.

Significance of Writing Assignment Introduction

First, we need to understand the significance of writing a good introduction to an assignment. So you must have heard that the first impression is the last impression, and an introduction of your assignment works as a first impression for your assignment. 

Thus, if you wish to attract your examiner’s attention or your readers, you should write a good introduction for your assignment. Moreover, the important role of the introduction is to give an overview of the assignment, which helps the reader determine whether they want to read it.

Hence, before writing an assignment, it is very important to understand how to write an introduction of an assignment .

Strategies: How to write an assignment introduction

• A good introduction to the assignment manifests the following strategies –
• It must show the main objective and purpose of the assignment.
• The importance of assignment.
• The purview of the assignment’s study that is what it includes.
• A brief description of the assignment’s content and its organization.

Characteristics of Good Introduction

Before knowing how to write an assignment introduction, the most crucial thing is to know the characteristics of a good introduction. Because then only you can write a good introduction. So following are the essential characteristics of a good introduction-

• A good introduction is written precisely and clearly so that everyone can understand it. In short, there must not be any language errors.
• It must be written while remembering that it should be attention-grabbing so that it can grab the attention of its readers.
• A good introduction always shows the purpose of the study and what the study is about.
• A Good Assignment should be grammatical error free and plagiarism free. It will be a wise decision to take help from AI Content Detector tool like Content at Scale’s AI detector.
• Best Guide on How to Write a Case Study Assignment?
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Elements: How to Write Introduction For Assignment

1.   background.

The first thing you have to write in an introduction is a brief background of the study. You have to give an overview of your assignment, what your assignment is about, its impact, and its area of study.

2.   Context in brief

You have to include a gist of the context of your assignment. It helps the readers to get information about the scope of the study in the assignment. But, including a summarizer tool can automate this process for your convenience.

3.   Your Contention

You have to write your stance on the question involved in the statement. It should be limited to one statement. It will help the readers understand your stance on such points and that the assignment is based on such points.

4.   Main points of study

You will write one line on the main points of your study as it will help the readers circumscribe the assignment’s limits.

5.   Definition of the Topic

The most important step in how to write an introduction for an assignment is to write a definition of the topic of the assignment very briefly. So that readers can understand the title of the study at once.

6.   Why are you writing on this topic only

It is always suggested that you write in the introduction of an assignment why you are writing on this topic only.

7.   Outline

Write briefly about the outline or structure of the assignment so that readers can read accordingly, and also it will help you to define the scope of the assignment in short.

However, students often look for how to write assignment pdf. So, below we provide the assignment introduction pdf.

How To Write An Introduction Of An Assignment Pdf

Download this PDF of how to write an introduction on an assignment:

How Long Should An Assignment Introduction Be?

It is true that students find this question while looking for an answer on the assignment’s introduction page. Let’s state that while writing an assignment, the introduction section should not be too long. Furthermore, the context should not be more than a few pages long.

Keep your assignment’s introduction simple and readable. Replace difficult words with simpler ones to fix readability issues (if any). To save time and effort, online paraphrasing tools such as Editpad or Paraphraser can be used to paraphrase text in a simple way.

If you are writing a 2000-word assignment, the introduction should be 200-250 words long.

But if you are writing a 3000-word assignment, the introduction should be 350-400 words long.

Guidelines/Tips On How To Write An Assignment Introduction

• Always start your assignment’s introduction with a broad idea about the topic of the assignment. After giving a broader picture of the study, you have to narrow down the discussion and write the main object of the study.
• Don’t forget to state the significance of your assignment in brief. It is the prominent part of the introduction.
• You have to smartly write about the tasks you are dealing with in the assignment in brief.
• Make sure you use easy and understandable language so that readers don’t find it difficult to understand the introduction; otherwise, they will not read the other parts of the assignment as well.
• Double-check and proofread your assignment introduction to ensure it is free from spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes.

These guidelines are very important in writing a good introduction to your assignment. If you want to be well-versed in writing an assignment introduction, it is mandatory first to be acquainted with these tips and guidelines.

Assignment Introduction Example

For more clarity, you can see the following assignment example;

Is There Any Other Way To Write Or Get An Effective Assignment Introduction?

Yes, there is! 

It has been seen that there are several writers who are confused when it comes to the assignment’s introduction writing. And it is true that they struggle to summarise the broad issue and write an introduction without conducting sufficient research. However, because the subject experts or online assignments help provide experts who are well-versed in the field, they easily write the introduction in minutes.

• The majority of students do not properly understand the English language. The experts who work in the writing industry have years of experience in writing assignments. That is why they always make sure to write an engaging introduction that also seems professional.
• Furthermore, the requirements of the writer are always given priority by the professionals. After that, they write a professional article that will, without a doubt, engage the reader.
• The expert not only helps the student in preparing the assignment’s introduction. They offer their support in completing the entire home task and guarantee that they will get an A+ grade.
• Besides that, the professionals’ support is available 24/7/365/366 days. So you won’t have to worry about coming up with a solution for your writing task.

What Makes A Good Introduction?

As you already know that, the rules are always subject to change, and our perspectives may be different. However, the academic standards for writing an introduction are quite clear. When creating a great introduction for an assignment, you have to make sure some of the points that are given below:

• Motivates the audience.
• Introduces your thesis statement.
• Defines the topic you’re talking about.
• Emphasizes the significance of your topic.
• Highlights the main points you want to discuss.
• Provides your reasoning for approaching your topic.
• Gives a high-level overview of your methodology.
• Provides statistical information and the purpose of your methodology.

Note: Remember that even creative writing tasks require an inspiring introduction that discusses your purpose for writing.

On the other hand, writing an introduction is relatively easy. Some important things must be clear, including:

• Your topic’s importance.
• The goal of your paper.
• An element of explanation.
• A powerful opening hook sentence.
• Include a link to your thesis statement.

Quick recap

To write an engaging assignment introduction, remember to:

• Make their introduction interesting, 
• outline the reasons, 
• make the audience curious about your assignment, 
• and keep the audience guessing.

Experts warn that rephrasing the assignment question or telling everything in the opening like a story synopsis is not a good idea. You must stick to your tutor’s specified word limit for the assignment introduction and write it with a clear, focused approach.

Since the time assignments have become a crucial part of our studies and grades, and the need to learn the concept and structure of assignments has arisen. 

An introduction is the important part of the assignment to grab readers’ attention and tell in brief about the background and information of the assignment. Thus it is very important to learn how to write assignment introductions. The introduction of an assignment should be eye-catching and alluring to capture the audience and make them read the whole assignment.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. what are the 3 parts of an introduction paragraph.

Following are the three parts of an introduction:  1. Parts of an introduction 2. The opening statement 3. The supporting sentences 4. The introductory topic sentence.

Q2. What are the key elements of an introduction?

The introduction must have the following responsibilities: 1. Get the audience’s attention 2. Introduce the topic 3. Explain its relevance to the audience 4. State a thesis or purpose 5. Outline the main points.

Q3. How to write introduction for assignment?

A good introduction shows the reader that the essay will provide a relevant answer to the assignment question. As a result, the introduction should link back to the question. That is done by writing a paragraph that deals with all the key content mentioned in the assignment question.

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Introductions

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain the functions of introductions, offer strategies for creating effective introductions, and provide some examples of less effective introductions to avoid.

The role of introductions

Introductions and conclusions can be the most difficult parts of papers to write. Usually when you sit down to respond to an assignment, you have at least some sense of what you want to say in the body of your paper. You might have chosen a few examples you want to use or have an idea that will help you answer the main question of your assignment; these sections, therefore, may not be as hard to write. And it’s fine to write them first! But in your final draft, these middle parts of the paper can’t just come out of thin air; they need to be introduced and concluded in a way that makes sense to your reader.

Your introduction and conclusion act as bridges that transport your readers from their own lives into the “place” of your analysis. If your readers pick up your paper about education in the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, for example, they need a transition to help them leave behind the world of Chapel Hill, television, e-mail, and The Daily Tar Heel and to help them temporarily enter the world of nineteenth-century American slavery. By providing an introduction that helps your readers make a transition between their own world and the issues you will be writing about, you give your readers the tools they need to get into your topic and care about what you are saying. Similarly, once you’ve hooked your readers with the introduction and offered evidence to prove your thesis, your conclusion can provide a bridge to help your readers make the transition back to their daily lives. (See our handout on conclusions .)

Note that what constitutes a good introduction may vary widely based on the kind of paper you are writing and the academic discipline in which you are writing it. If you are uncertain what kind of introduction is expected, ask your instructor.

Why bother writing a good introduction?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. The opening paragraph of your paper will provide your readers with their initial impressions of your argument, your writing style, and the overall quality of your work. A vague, disorganized, error-filled, off-the-wall, or boring introduction will probably create a negative impression. On the other hand, a concise, engaging, and well-written introduction will start your readers off thinking highly of you, your analytical skills, your writing, and your paper.

Your introduction is an important road map for the rest of your paper. Your introduction conveys a lot of information to your readers. You can let them know what your topic is, why it is important, and how you plan to proceed with your discussion. In many academic disciplines, your introduction should contain a thesis that will assert your main argument. Your introduction should also give the reader a sense of the kinds of information you will use to make that argument and the general organization of the paragraphs and pages that will follow. After reading your introduction, your readers should not have any major surprises in store when they read the main body of your paper.

Ideally, your introduction will make your readers want to read your paper. The introduction should capture your readers’ interest, making them want to read the rest of your paper. Opening with a compelling story, an interesting question, or a vivid example can get your readers to see why your topic matters and serve as an invitation for them to join you for an engaging intellectual conversation (remember, though, that these strategies may not be suitable for all papers and disciplines).

Strategies for writing an effective introduction

Start by thinking about the question (or questions) you are trying to answer. Your entire essay will be a response to this question, and your introduction is the first step toward that end. Your direct answer to the assigned question will be your thesis, and your thesis will likely be included in your introduction, so it is a good idea to use the question as a jumping off point. Imagine that you are assigned the following question:

Drawing on the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , discuss the relationship between education and slavery in 19th-century America. Consider the following: How did white control of education reinforce slavery? How did Douglass and other enslaved African Americans view education while they endured slavery? And what role did education play in the acquisition of freedom? Most importantly, consider the degree to which education was or was not a major force for social change with regard to slavery.

You will probably refer back to your assignment extensively as you prepare your complete essay, and the prompt itself can also give you some clues about how to approach the introduction. Notice that it starts with a broad statement and then narrows to focus on specific questions from the book. One strategy might be to use a similar model in your own introduction—start off with a big picture sentence or two and then focus in on the details of your argument about Douglass. Of course, a different approach could also be very successful, but looking at the way the professor set up the question can sometimes give you some ideas for how you might answer it. (See our handout on understanding assignments for additional information on the hidden clues in assignments.)

Decide how general or broad your opening should be. Keep in mind that even a “big picture” opening needs to be clearly related to your topic; an opening sentence that said “Human beings, more than any other creatures on earth, are capable of learning” would be too broad for our sample assignment about slavery and education. If you have ever used Google Maps or similar programs, that experience can provide a helpful way of thinking about how broad your opening should be. Imagine that you’re researching Chapel Hill. If what you want to find out is whether Chapel Hill is at roughly the same latitude as Rome, it might make sense to hit that little “minus” sign on the online map until it has zoomed all the way out and you can see the whole globe. If you’re trying to figure out how to get from Chapel Hill to Wrightsville Beach, it might make more sense to zoom in to the level where you can see most of North Carolina (but not the rest of the world, or even the rest of the United States). And if you are looking for the intersection of Ridge Road and Manning Drive so that you can find the Writing Center’s main office, you may need to zoom all the way in. The question you are asking determines how “broad” your view should be. In the sample assignment above, the questions are probably at the “state” or “city” level of generality. When writing, you need to place your ideas in context—but that context doesn’t generally have to be as big as the whole galaxy!

Try writing your introduction last. You may think that you have to write your introduction first, but that isn’t necessarily true, and it isn’t always the most effective way to craft a good introduction. You may find that you don’t know precisely what you are going to argue at the beginning of the writing process. It is perfectly fine to start out thinking that you want to argue a particular point but wind up arguing something slightly or even dramatically different by the time you’ve written most of the paper. The writing process can be an important way to organize your ideas, think through complicated issues, refine your thoughts, and develop a sophisticated argument. However, an introduction written at the beginning of that discovery process will not necessarily reflect what you wind up with at the end. You will need to revise your paper to make sure that the introduction, all of the evidence, and the conclusion reflect the argument you intend. Sometimes it’s easiest to just write up all of your evidence first and then write the introduction last—that way you can be sure that the introduction will match the body of the paper.

Don’t be afraid to write a tentative introduction first and then change it later. Some people find that they need to write some kind of introduction in order to get the writing process started. That’s fine, but if you are one of those people, be sure to return to your initial introduction later and rewrite if necessary.

Open with something that will draw readers in. Consider these options (remembering that they may not be suitable for all kinds of papers):

• an intriguing example —for example, Douglass writes about a mistress who initially teaches him but then ceases her instruction as she learns more about slavery.
• a provocative quotation that is closely related to your argument —for example, Douglass writes that “education and slavery were incompatible with each other.” (Quotes from famous people, inspirational quotes, etc. may not work well for an academic paper; in this example, the quote is from the author himself.)
• a puzzling scenario —for example, Frederick Douglass says of slaves that “[N]othing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries!” Douglass clearly asserts that slave owners went to great lengths to destroy the mental capacities of slaves, yet his own life story proves that these efforts could be unsuccessful.
• a vivid and perhaps unexpected anecdote —for example, “Learning about slavery in the American history course at Frederick Douglass High School, students studied the work slaves did, the impact of slavery on their families, and the rules that governed their lives. We didn’t discuss education, however, until one student, Mary, raised her hand and asked, ‘But when did they go to school?’ That modern high school students could not conceive of an American childhood devoid of formal education speaks volumes about the centrality of education to American youth today and also suggests the significance of the deprivation of education in past generations.”
• a thought-provoking question —for example, given all of the freedoms that were denied enslaved individuals in the American South, why does Frederick Douglass focus his attentions so squarely on education and literacy?

Pay special attention to your first sentence. Start off on the right foot with your readers by making sure that the first sentence actually says something useful and that it does so in an interesting and polished way.

How to evaluate your introduction draft

Ask a friend to read your introduction and then tell you what they expect the paper will discuss, what kinds of evidence the paper will use, and what the tone of the paper will be. If your friend is able to predict the rest of your paper accurately, you probably have a good introduction.

Five kinds of less effective introductions

1. The placeholder introduction. When you don’t have much to say on a given topic, it is easy to create this kind of introduction. Essentially, this kind of weaker introduction contains several sentences that are vague and don’t really say much. They exist just to take up the “introduction space” in your paper. If you had something more effective to say, you would probably say it, but in the meantime this paragraph is just a place holder.

Example: Slavery was one of the greatest tragedies in American history. There were many different aspects of slavery. Each created different kinds of problems for enslaved people.

2. The restated question introduction. Restating the question can sometimes be an effective strategy, but it can be easy to stop at JUST restating the question instead of offering a more specific, interesting introduction to your paper. The professor or teaching assistant wrote your question and will be reading many essays in response to it—they do not need to read a whole paragraph that simply restates the question.

Example: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass discusses the relationship between education and slavery in 19th century America, showing how white control of education reinforced slavery and how Douglass and other enslaved African Americans viewed education while they endured. Moreover, the book discusses the role that education played in the acquisition of freedom. Education was a major force for social change with regard to slavery.

3. The Webster’s Dictionary introduction. This introduction begins by giving the dictionary definition of one or more of the words in the assigned question. Anyone can look a word up in the dictionary and copy down what Webster says. If you want to open with a discussion of an important term, it may be far more interesting for you (and your reader) if you develop your own definition of the term in the specific context of your class and assignment. You may also be able to use a definition from one of the sources you’ve been reading for class. Also recognize that the dictionary is also not a particularly authoritative work—it doesn’t take into account the context of your course and doesn’t offer particularly detailed information. If you feel that you must seek out an authority, try to find one that is very relevant and specific. Perhaps a quotation from a source reading might prove better? Dictionary introductions are also ineffective simply because they are so overused. Instructors may see a great many papers that begin in this way, greatly decreasing the dramatic impact that any one of those papers will have.

Example: Webster’s dictionary defines slavery as “the state of being a slave,” as “the practice of owning slaves,” and as “a condition of hard work and subjection.”

4. The “dawn of man” introduction. This kind of introduction generally makes broad, sweeping statements about the relevance of this topic since the beginning of time, throughout the world, etc. It is usually very general (similar to the placeholder introduction) and fails to connect to the thesis. It may employ cliches—the phrases “the dawn of man” and “throughout human history” are examples, and it’s hard to imagine a time when starting with one of these would work. Instructors often find them extremely annoying.

Example: Since the dawn of man, slavery has been a problem in human history.

5. The book report introduction. This introduction is what you had to do for your elementary school book reports. It gives the name and author of the book you are writing about, tells what the book is about, and offers other basic facts about the book. You might resort to this sort of introduction when you are trying to fill space because it’s a familiar, comfortable format. It is ineffective because it offers details that your reader probably already knows and that are irrelevant to the thesis.

Example: Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave , in the 1840s. It was published in 1986 by Penguin Books. In it, he tells the story of his life.

And now for the conclusion…

Writing an effective introduction can be tough. Try playing around with several different options and choose the one that ends up sounding best to you!

Just as your introduction helps readers make the transition to your topic, your conclusion needs to help them return to their daily lives–but with a lasting sense of how what they have just read is useful or meaningful. Check out our handout on  conclusions for tips on ending your paper as effectively as you began it!

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Douglass, Frederick. 1995. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself . New York: Dover.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write an Introduction Paragraph in 3 Steps

General Education

It’s the roadmap to your essay, it’s the forecast for your argument, it’s...your introduction paragraph, and writing one can feel pretty intimidating. The introduction paragraph is a part of just about every kind of academic writing , from persuasive essays to research papers. But that doesn’t mean writing one is easy!

If trying to write an intro paragraph makes you feel like a Muggle trying to do magic, trust us: you aren’t alone. But there are some tips and tricks that can make the process easier—and that’s where we come in.

In this article, we’re going to explain how to write a captivating intro paragraph by covering the following info:  

• A discussion of what an introduction paragraph is and its purpose in an essay
• An overview of the most effective introduction paragraph format, with explanations of the three main parts of an intro paragraph
• An analysis of real intro paragraph examples, with a discussion of what works and what doesn’t
• A list of four top tips on how to write an introduction paragraph

Are you ready? Let’s begin!

What Is an Introduction Paragraph? 

An introduction paragraph is the first paragraph of an essay , paper, or other type of academic writing. Argumentative essays , book reports, research papers, and even personal  essays are common types of writing that require an introduction paragraph. Whether you’re writing a research paper for a science course or an argumentative essay for English class , you’re going to have to write an intro paragraph. 

So what’s the purpose of an intro paragraph? As a reader’s first impression of your essay, the intro paragraph should introduce the topic of your paper. 

Your introduction will also state any claims, questions, or issues that your paper will focus on. This is commonly known as your paper’s thesis . This condenses the overall point of your paper into one or two short sentences that your reader can come back and reference later.

But intro paragraphs need to do a bit more than just introduce your topic. An intro paragraph is also supposed to grab your reader’s attention. The intro paragraph is your chance to provide just enough info and intrigue to make your reader say, “Hey, this topic sounds interesting. I think I’ll keep reading this essay!” That can help your essay stand out from the crowd.

In most cases, an intro paragraph will be relatively short. A good intro will be clear, brief, purposeful, and focused. While there are some exceptions to this rule, it’s common for intro paragraphs to consist of three to five sentences . 

Effectively introducing your essay’s topic, purpose, and getting your reader invested in your essay sounds like a lot to ask from one little paragraph, huh? In the next section, we’ll demystify the intro paragraph format by breaking it down into its core parts . When you learn how to approach each part of an intro, writing one won’t seem so scary!

Once you figure out the three parts of an intro paragraph, writing one will be a piece of cake!

The 3 Main Parts of an Intro Paragraph

In general, an intro paragraph is going to have three main parts: a hook, context, and a thesis statement . Each of these pieces of the intro plays a key role in acquainting the reader with the topic and purpose of your essay. 

Below, we’ll explain how to start an introduction paragraph by writing an effective hook, providing context, and crafting a thesis statement. When you put these elements together, you’ll have an intro paragraph that does a great job of making a great first impression on your audience!

Intro Paragraph Part 1: The Hook

When it comes to how to start an introduction paragraph, o ne of the most common approaches is to start with something called a hook. 

What does hook mean here, though? Think of it this way: it’s like when you start a new Netflix series: you look up a few hours (and a few episodes) later and you say, “Whoa. I guess I must be hooked on this show!” 

That’s how the hook is supposed to work in an intro paragrap h: it should get your reader interested enough that they don’t want to press the proverbial “pause” button while they’re reading it . In other words, a hook is designed to grab your reader’s attention and keep them reading your essay! 

This means that the hook comes first in the intro paragraph format—it’ll be the opening sentence of your intro. 

It’s important to realize  that there are many different ways to write a good hook. But generally speaking, hooks must include these two things: what your topic is, and the angle you’re taking on that topic in your essay. 

One approach to writing a hook that works is starting with a general, but interesting, statement on your topic. In this type of hook, you’re trying to provide a broad introduction to your topic and your angle on the topic in an engaging way . 

For example, if you’re writing an essay about the role of the government in the American healthcare system, your hook might look something like this: 

There's a growing movement to require that the federal government provide affordable, effective healthcare for all Americans. 

This hook introduces the essay topic in a broad way (government and healthcare) by presenting a general statement on the topic. But the assumption presented in the hook can also be seen as controversial, which gets readers interested in learning more about what the writer—and the essay—has to say.

In other words, the statement above fulfills the goals of a good hook: it’s intriguing and provides a general introduction to the essay topic.

Intro Paragraph Part 2: Context

Once you’ve provided an attention-grabbing hook, you’ll want to give more context about your essay topic. Context refers to additional details that reveal the specific focus of your paper. So, whereas the hook provides a general introduction to your topic, context starts helping readers understand what exactly you’re going to be writing about

You can include anywhere from one to several sentences of context in your intro, depending on your teacher’s expectations, the length of your paper, and complexity of your topic. In these context-providing sentences, you want to begin narrowing the focus of your intro. You can do this by describing a specific issue or question about your topic that you’ll address in your essay. It also helps readers start to understand why the topic you’re writing about matters and why they should read about it. 

So, what counts as context for an intro paragraph? Context can be any important details or descriptions that provide background on existing perspectives, common cultural attitudes, or a specific situation or controversy relating to your essay topic. The context you include should acquaint your reader with the issues, questions, or events that motivated you to write an essay on your topic...and that your reader should know in order to understand your thesis. 

For instance, if you’re writing an essay analyzing the consequences of sexism in Hollywood, the context you include after your hook might make reference to the #metoo and #timesup movements that have generated public support for victims of sexual harassment. 

The key takeaway here is that context establishes why you’re addressing your topic and what makes it important. It also sets you up for success on the final piece of an intro paragraph: the thesis statement.

Elle Woods' statement offers a specific point of view on the topic of murder...which means it could serve as a pretty decent thesis statement!

Intro Paragraph Part 3: The Thesis

The final key part of how to write an intro paragraph is the thesis statement. The thesis statement is the backbone of your introduction: it conveys your argument or point of view on your topic in a clear, concise, and compelling way . The thesis is usually the last sentence of your intro paragraph. 

Whether it’s making a claim, outlining key points, or stating a hypothesis, your thesis statement will tell your reader exactly what idea(s) are going to be addressed in your essay. A good thesis statement will be clear, straightforward, and highlight the overall point you’re trying to make.

Some instructors also ask students to include an essay map as part of their thesis. An essay map is a section that outlines the major topics a paper will address. So for instance, say you’re writing a paper that argues for the importance of public transport in rural communities. Your thesis and essay map might look like this: 

Having public transport in rural communities helps people improve their economic situation by giving them reliable transportation to their job, reducing the amount of money they spend on gas, and providing new and unionized work .

The underlined section is the essay map because it touches on the three big things the writer will talk about later. It literally maps out the rest of the essay!

So let’s review: Your thesis takes the idea you’ve introduced in your hook and context and wraps it up. Think of it like a television episode: the hook sets the scene by presenting a general statement and/or interesting idea that sucks you in. The context advances the plot by describing the topic in more detail and helping readers understand why the topic is important. And finally, the thesis statement provides the climax by telling the reader what you have to say about the topic. 

The thesis statement is the most important part of the intro. Without it, your reader won’t know what the purpose of your essay is! And for a piece of writing to be effective, it needs to have a clear purpose. Your thesis statement conveys that purpose , so it’s important to put careful thought into writing a clear and compelling thesis statement. 

How To Write an Introduction Paragraph: Example and Analysis

Now that we’ve provided an intro paragraph outline and have explained the three key parts of an intro paragraph, let’s take a look at an intro paragraph in action.

To show you how an intro paragraph works, we’ve included a sample introduction paragraph below, followed by an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.

Example of Introduction Paragraph

While college students in the U.S. are struggling with how to pay for college, there is another surprising demographic that’s affected by the pressure to pay for college: families and parents. In the face of tuition price tags that total more than $100,000 (as a low estimate), families must make difficult decisions about how to save for their children’s college education. Charting a feasible path to saving for college is further complicated by the FAFSA’s estimates for an “Expected Family Contribution”—an amount of money that is rarely feasible for most American families. Due to these challenging financial circumstances and cultural pressure to give one’s children the best possible chance of success in adulthood, many families are going into serious debt to pay for their children’s college education. The U.S. government should move toward bearing more of the financial burden of college education. 

Example of Introduction Paragraph: Analysis

Before we dive into analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this example intro paragraph, let’s establish the essay topic. The sample intro indicates that t he essay topic will focus on one specific issue: who should cover the cost of college education in the U.S., and why. Both the hook and the context help us identify the topic, while the thesis in the last sentence tells us why this topic matters to the writer—they think the U.S. Government needs to help finance college education. This is also the writer’s argument, which they’ll cover in the body of their essay. 

Now that we’ve identified the essay topic presented in the sample intro, let’s dig into some analysis. To pin down its strengths and weaknesses, we’re going to use the following three questions to guide our example of introduction paragraph analysis: 

• Does this intro provide an attention-grabbing opening sentence that conveys the essay topic? 
• Does this intro provide relevant, engaging context about the essay topic? 
• Does this intro provide a thesis statement that establishes the writer’s point of view on the topic and what specific aspects of the issue the essay will address? 

Now, let’s use the questions above to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this sample intro paragraph. 

Does the Intro Have a Good Hook? 

First, the intro starts out with an attention-grabbing hook . The writer starts by presenting  an assumption (that the U.S. federal government bears most of the financial burden of college education), which makes the topic relatable to a wide audience of readers. Also note that the hook relates to the general topic of the essay, which is the high cost of college education. 

The hook then takes a surprising turn by presenting a counterclaim : that American families, rather than students, feel the true burden of paying for college. Some readers will have a strong emotional reaction to this provocative counterclaim, which will make them want to keep reading! As such, this intro provides an effective opening sentence that conveys the essay topic. 

Does the Intro Give Context?

T he second, third, and fourth sentences of the intro provide contextual details that reveal the specific focus of the writer’s paper . Remember: the context helps readers start to zoom in on what the paper will focus on, and what aspect of the general topic (college costs) will be discussed later on. 

The context in this intro reveals the intent and direction of the paper by explaining why the issue of families financing college is important. In other words, the context helps readers understand why this issue matters , and what aspects of this issue will be addressed in the paper.  

To provide effective context, the writer refers to issues (the exorbitant cost of college and high levels of family debt) that have received a lot of recent scholarly and media attention. These sentences of context also elaborate on the interesting perspective included in the hook: that American families are most affected by college costs.

Does the Intro Have a Thesis? 

Finally, this intro provides a thesis statement that conveys the writer’s point of view on the issue of financing college education. This writer believes that the U.S. government should do more to pay for students’ college educations. 

However, the thesis statement doesn’t give us any details about why the writer has made this claim or why this will help American families . There isn’t an essay map that helps readers understand what points the writer will make in the essay.

To revise this thesis statement so that it establishes the specific aspects of the topic that the essay will address, the writer could add the following to the beginning of the thesis statement:

The U.S. government should take on more of the financial burden of college education because other countries have shown this can improve education rates while reducing levels of familial poverty.

Check out the new section in bold. Not only does it clarify that the writer is talking about the pressure put on families, it touches on the big topics the writer will address in the paper: improving education rates and reduction of poverty. So not only do we have a clearer argumentative statement in this thesis, we also have an essay map!  

So, let’s recap our analysis. This sample intro paragraph does an effective job of providing an engaging hook and relatable, interesting context, but the thesis statement needs some work ! As you write your own intro paragraphs, you might consider using the questions above to evaluate and revise your work. Doing this will help ensure you’ve covered all of your bases and written an intro that your readers will find interesting!

4 Tips for How To Write an Introduction Paragraph

Now that we’ve gone over an example of introduction paragraph analysis, let’s talk about how to write an introduction paragraph of your own. Keep reading for four tips for writing a successful intro paragraph for any essay. 

Tip 1: Analyze Your Essay Prompt

If you’re having trouble with how to start an introduction paragraph, analyze your essay prompt! Most teachers give you some kind of assignment sheet, formal instructions, or prompt to set the expectations for an essay they’ve assigned, right? Those instructions can help guide you as you write your intro paragraph!

Because they’ll be reading and responding to your essay, you want to make sure you meet your teacher’s expectations for an intro paragraph . For instance, if they’ve provided specific instructions about how long the intro should be or where the thesis statement should be located, be sure to follow them!

The type of paper you’re writing can give you clues as to how to approach your intro as well. If you’re writing a research paper, your professor might expect you to provide a research question or state a hypothesis in your intro. If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you’ll need to make sure your intro overviews the context surrounding your argument and your thesis statement includes a clear, defensible claim. 

Using the parameters set out by your instructor and assignment sheet can put some easy-to-follow boundaries in place for things like your intro’s length, structure, and content. Following these guidelines can free you up to focus on other aspects of your intro... like coming up with an exciting hook and conveying your point of view on your topic!

Tip 2: Narrow Your Topic

You can’t write an intro paragraph without first identifying your topic. To make your intro as effective as possible, you need to define the parameters of your topic clearly—and you need to be specific. 

For example, let’s say you want to write about college football. “NCAA football” is too broad of a topic for a paper. There is a lot to talk about in terms of college football! It would be tough to write an intro paragraph that’s focused, purposeful, and engaging on this topic. In fact, if you did try to address this whole topic, you’d probably end up writing a book!

Instead, you should narrow broad topics to  identify a specific question, claim, or issue pertaining to some aspect of NCAA football for your intro to be effective. So, for instance, you could frame your topic as, “How can college professors better support NCAA football players in academics?” This focused topic pertaining to NCAA football would give you a more manageable angle to discuss in your paper.

So before you think about writing your intro, ask yourself: Is my essay topic specific, focused, and logical? Does it convey an issue or question that I can explore over the course of several pages? Once you’ve established a good topic, you’ll have the foundation you need to write an effective intro paragraph . 

Once you've figured out your topic, it's time to hit the books!

Tip 3: Do Your Research

This tip is tightly intertwined with the one above, and it’s crucial to writing a good intro: do your research! And, guess what? This tip applies to all papers—even ones that aren’t technically research papers. 

Here’s why you need to do some research: getting the lay of the land on what others have said about your topic—whether that’s scholars and researchers or the mass media— will help you narrow your topic, write an engaging hook, and provide relatable context. 

You don't want to sit down to write your intro without a solid understanding of the different perspectives on your topic. Whether those are the perspectives of experts or the general public, these points of view will help you write your intro in a way that is intriguing and compelling for your audience of readers. 

Tip 4: Write Multiple Drafts

Some say to write your intro first; others say write it last. The truth is, there isn’t a right or wrong time to write your intro—but you do need to have enough time to write multiple drafts . 

Oftentimes, your professor will ask you to write multiple drafts of your paper, which gives you a built-in way to make sure you revise your intro. Another approach you could take is to write out a rough draft of your intro before you begin writing your essay, then revise it multiple times as you draft out your paper. 

Here’s why this approach can work: as you write your paper, you’ll probably come up with new insights on your topic that you didn’t have right from the start. You can use these “light bulb” moments to reevaluate your intro and make revisions that keep it in line with your developing essay draft. 

Once you’ve written your entire essay, consider going back and revising your intro again . You can ask yourself these questions as you evaluate your intro: 

• Is my hook still relevant to the way I’ve approached the topic in my essay?
• Do I provide enough appropriate context to introduce my essay? 
• Now that my essay is written, does my thesis statement still accurately reflect the point of view that I present in my essay?

Using these questions as a guide and putting your intro through multiple revisions will help ensure that you’ve written the best intro for the final draft of your essay. Also, revising your writing is always a good thing to do—and this applies to your intro, too!

What's Next?

Your college essays also need great intro paragraphs. Here’s a guide that focuses on how to write the perfect intro for your admissions essays. 

Of course, the intro is just one part of your college essay . This article will teach you how to write a college essay that makes admissions counselors sit up and take notice.

Are you trying to write an analytical essay? Our step-by-step guide can help you knock it out of the park.

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Essay Introduction Examples

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Written by  Scribendi

Always have a road map for an essay introduction . Having a strong essay introduction structure is critical to a successful paper. It sets the tone for the reader and interests them in your work. It also tells them what the essay is about and why they should read it at all.

It shouldn't leave the reader confused with a cliffhanger at the end. Instead, it should generate interest and guide the reader to Chapter One. Using the right parts of an essay introduction can help with this.

Check out an effective essay introduction structure below. It’s a road map for writing an essay—just like the parts of essay introductions are road maps for readers.

Essay Introduction Structure

Attention-grabbing start

Outline of argument

Thesis statement

Some academics find the beginning the most difficult part of writing an essay , so our editors have created some examples of good essay introductions to guide you. Let's take a look at the samples below to see how the essay introduction structures come together. 

If you are unsure about your paper, our essay editors would love to give you some feedback on how to write an essay introduction. 

[1] According to Paul Ratsmith, the tenuous but nonetheless important relationship between pumpkins and rats is little understood: "While I've always been fascinated by this natural kinship, the connection between pumpkins and rats has been the subject of few, if any, other studies" (2008). [2] Ratsmith has been studying this connection, something he coined "pumpkinology," since the early 1990s. He is most well known for documenting the three years he spent living in the wild among pumpkins and rats. [3] Though it is a topic of little recent interest, the relationship has been noted in several ancient texts and seems to have been well understood by the Romans. Critics of Ratsmith have cited poor science and questionable methodology when dismissing his results, going so far as to call pumpkinology "rubbish" (de Vil, 2009), "stupid" (Claw, 2010), and "quite possibly made up" (Igthorn, 2009). [4] Despite these criticisms, there does appear to be a strong correlation between pumpkin patches and rat populations, with Ratsmith documenting numerous pumpkin–rat colonies across North America, leading to the conclusion that pumpkins and rats are indeed "nature's best friends" (2008).

Let's break down this example of a good essay introduction structure. The beginning hooks our attention from the get-go in section one. This is because it piques our curiosity. What is this strange relationship? Why has no one studied it? Then, section two gives us context for the topic. Ratsmith is an expert in a controversial field: pumpkinology. It's the study of the connection between pumpkins and rats. 

The second half of the paragraph also demonstrates why this is a good essay introduction example. Section three gives us the main argument: the topic is rarely studied because critics think Ratsmith's work is "rubbish," but the relationship between pumpkins and rats has ancient roots. Then section four gives us the thesis statement: Ratsmith's work has some merit.

The parts of an essay introduction help us chart a course through the topic. We know the paper will take us on a journey. It's all because the author practiced how to write an essay introduction. 

Let’s take a look at another example of a good essay introduction.

[1] Societies have long believed that if a black cat crosses one's path, one might have bad luck—but it wasn't until King Charles I's black cat died that the ruler's bad luck began (Pemberton, 2018). [2] Indeed, for centuries, black cats have been seen as the familiars of witches—as demonic associates of Satan who disrespect authority (Yuko, 2021). Yet, they have also been associated with good luck, from England's rulers to long-distance sailors (Cole, 2021). [3] This essay shows how outdated the bad luck superstition really is. It provides a comprehensive history of the belief and then provides proof that this superstition has no place in today's modern society. [4] It argues that despite the prevailing belief that animals cause bad luck, black cats often bring what seems to be "good luck" and deserve a new reputation.

This example of a good essay introduction pulls us in right away. This is because section one provides an interesting fact about King Charles I. What is the story there, and what bad luck did he experience after his cat passed away? Then, section two provides us with general information about the current status of black cats. We understand the context of the essay and why the topic is controversial.

Section three then gives us a road map that leads us through the main arguments. Finally, section four gives us the essay's thesis: "black cats often bring what seems to be 'good luck' and deserve a new reputation."

Still feeling unsure about how to write an essay introduction? Here's another example using the essay introduction structure we discussed earlier.

[1] When the Lutz family moved into a new house in Amityville, New York, they found themselves terrorized by a vengeful ghost (Labianca, 2021). Since then, their famous tale has been debunked by scientists and the family themselves (Smith, 2005). [2] Yet ghost stories have gripped human consciousness for centuries (History, 2009). Scientists, researchers, and theorists alike have argued whether ghosts are simply figments of the imagination or real things that go bump in the night. In considering this question, many scientists have stated that ghosts may actually exist. [3] Lindley (2017) believes the answer may be in the quantum world, which "just doesn’t work the way the world around us works," but "we don’t really have the concepts to deal with it." Scientific studies on the existence of ghosts date back hundreds of years (History, 2009), and technology has undergone a vast evolution since then (Lamey, 2018). State-of-the-art tools and concepts can now reveal more about ghosts than we've ever known (Kane, 2015). [4] This essay uses these tools to provide definitive proof of the existence of ghosts in the quantum realm. 

This example of a good essay introduction uses a slightly different strategy than the others. To hook the reader, it begins with an interesting anecdote related to the topic. That pulls us in, making us wonder what really happened to the Lutzs. Then, section two provides us with some background information about the topic to help us understand. Many people believe ghosts aren't real, but some scientists think they are.

This immediately flows into section three, which charts a course through the main arguments the essay will make. Finally, it ends with the essay's thesis: there is definitive proof of the existence of ghosts in the quantum realm. It all works because the author used the parts of an essay introduction well.

For attention-grabbing introductions, an understanding of essay introduction structure and how to write an essay introduction is required.

Our essay introduction examples showing the parts of an essay introduction will help you craft the beginning paragraph you need to start your writing journey on the right foot.

If you'd like more personalized attention to your essay, consider sending it for Essay Editing by Scribendi. We can help you ensure that your essay starts off strong.

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Traditional Academic Essays In Three Parts

Part i: the introduction.

An introduction is usually the first paragraph of your academic essay. If you’re writing a long essay, you might need 2 or 3 paragraphs to introduce your topic to your reader. A good introduction does 2 things:

• Gets the reader’s attention. You can get a reader’s attention by telling a story, providing a statistic, pointing out something strange or interesting, providing and discussing an interesting quote, etc. Be interesting and find some original angle via which to engage others in your topic.
• Provides a specific and debatable thesis statement. The thesis statement is usually just one sentence long, but it might be longer—even a whole paragraph—if the essay you’re writing is long. A good thesis statement makes a debatable point, meaning a point someone might disagree with and argue against. It also serves as a roadmap for what you argue in your paper.

Part II: The Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs help you prove your thesis and move you along a compelling trajectory from your introduction to your conclusion. If your thesis is a simple one, you might not need a lot of body paragraphs to prove it. If it’s more complicated, you’ll need more body paragraphs. An easy way to remember the parts of a body paragraph is to think of them as the MEAT of your essay:

Main Idea. The part of a topic sentence that states the main idea of the body paragraph. All of the sentences in the paragraph connect to it. Keep in mind that main ideas are…

• like labels. They appear in the first sentence of the paragraph and tell your reader what’s inside the paragraph.
• arguable. They’re not statements of fact; they’re debatable points that you prove with evidence.
• focused. Make a specific point in each paragraph and then prove that point.

Evidence. The parts of a paragraph that prove the main idea. You might include different types of evidence in different sentences. Keep in mind that different disciplines have different ideas about what counts as evidence and they adhere to different citation styles. Examples of evidence include…

• quotations and/or paraphrases from sources.
• facts , e.g. statistics or findings from studies you’ve conducted.
• narratives and/or descriptions , e.g. of your own experiences.

Analysis. The parts of a paragraph that explain the evidence. Make sure you tie the evidence you provide back to the paragraph’s main idea. In other words, discuss the evidence.

Transition. The part of a paragraph that helps you move fluidly from the last paragraph. Transitions appear in topic sentences along with main ideas, and they look both backward and forward in order to help you connect your ideas for your reader. Don’t end paragraphs with transitions; start with them.

Keep in mind that MEAT does not occur in that order. The “ T ransition” and the “ M ain Idea” often combine to form the first sentence—the topic sentence—and then paragraphs contain multiple sentences of evidence and analysis. For example, a paragraph might look like this: TM. E. E. A. E. E. A. A.

Part III: The Conclusion

A conclusion is the last paragraph of your essay, or, if you’re writing a really long essay, you might need 2 or 3 paragraphs to conclude. A conclusion typically does one of two things—or, of course, it can do both:

• Summarizes the argument. Some instructors expect you not to say anything new in your conclusion. They just want you to restate your main points. Especially if you’ve made a long and complicated argument, it’s useful to restate your main points for your reader by the time you’ve gotten to your conclusion. If you opt to do so, keep in mind that you should use different language than you used in your introduction and your body paragraphs. The introduction and conclusion shouldn’t be the same.
• For example, your argument might be significant to studies of a certain time period .
• Alternately, it might be significant to a certain geographical region .
• Alternately still, it might influence how your readers think about the future . You might even opt to speculate about the future and/or call your readers to action in your conclusion.

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Essay Introductions

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Write an introduction that interests the reader and effectively outlines your arguments.

Every essay or assignment you write must begin with an introduction. It might be helpful to think of the introduction as an inverted pyramid. In such a pyramid, you begin by presenting a broad introduction to the topic and end by making a more focused point about that topic in your thesis statement. The introduction has three essential parts, each of which serves a particular purpose.

The first part is the "attention-grabber." You need to interest your reader in your topic so that they will want to continue reading. You also want to do that in a way that is fresh and original. For example, although it may be tempting to begin your essay with a dictionary definition, this technique is stale  because it has been widely overused. Instead, you might try one of the following techniques:

Offer a surprising statistic that conveys something about the problem to be addressed in the paper.

Perhaps you can find an interesting quote that nicely sums up your argument.

Use rhetorical questions that place your readers in a different situation in order to get them thinking about your topic in a new way.

If you have a personal connection to the topic, you might use an anecdote or story to get your readers emotionally involved.

For example, if you were writing a paper about drunk drivers, you might begin with a compelling story about someone whose life was forever altered by a drunk driver: "At eighteen, Michelle had a lifetime of promise in front of her. Attending college on a track scholarship, she was earning good grades and making lots of friends. Then one night her life was forever altered…"

From this attention grabbing opener, you would need to move to the next part of the introduction, in which you offer some relevant background on the specific purpose of the essay. This section helps the reader see why you are focusing on this topic and makes the transition to the main point of your paper. For this reason, this is sometimes called the "transitional" part of the introduction.

In the example above, the anecdote about Michelle might capture the reader's attention, but the essay is not really about Michelle. The attention grabber might get the reader thinking about how drunk driving can destroy people's lives, but it doesn't introduce the topic of the need for stricter drunk driving penalties (or whatever the real focus of the paper might be).

Therefore, you need to bridge the gap between your attention-grabber and your thesis with some transitional discussion. In this part of your introduction, you narrow your focus of the topic and explain why the attention-grabber is relevant to the specific area you will be discussing. You should introduce your specific topic and provide any necessary background information that the reader would need in order to understand the problem that you are presenting in the paper. You can also define any key terms the reader might not know.

Continuing with the example above, we might move from the narrative about Michelle to a short discussion of the scope of the problem of drunk drivers. We might say, for example: "Michelle's story is not isolated. Each year XX (number) of lives are lost due to drunk-driving accidents." You could follow this with a short discussion of how serious the problem is and why the reader should care about this problem. This effectively moves the reader from the story about Michelle to your real topic, which might be the need for stricter penalties for drinking and driving.

Finally, the introduction must conclude with a clear statement of the overall point you want to make in the paper. This is called your "thesis statement." It is the narrowest part of your inverted pyramid, and it states exactly what your essay will be arguing.

In this scenario, your thesis would be the point you are trying to make about drunk driving. You might be arguing for better enforcement of existing laws, enactment of stricter penalties, or funding for education about drinking and driving. Whatever the case, your thesis would clearly state the main point your paper is trying to make. Here's an example: "Drunk driving laws need to include stricter penalties for those convicted of drinking under the influence of alcohol." Your essay would then go on to support this thesis with the reasons why stricter penalties are needed.

In addition to your thesis, your introduction can often include a "road map" that explains how you will defend your thesis. This gives the reader a general sense of how you will organize the different points that follow throughout the essay. Sometimes the "map" is incorporated right into the thesis statement, and sometimes it is a separate sentence. Below is an example of a thesis with a "map."

"Because drunk driving can result in unnecessary and premature deaths, permanent injury for survivors, and billions of dollars spent on medical expenses,  drunk drivers should face stricter penalties for driving under the influence." The underlined words here are the "map" that show your reader the main points of support you will present in the essay. They also serve to set up the paper's arrangement because they tell the order in which you will present these topics.

In constructing an introduction, make sure the introduction clearly reflects the goal or purpose of the assignment and that the thesis presents not only the topic to be discussed but also states a clear position about that topic that you will support and develop throughout the paper. In shorter papers, the introduction is usually only one or two paragraphs, but it can be several paragraphs in a longer paper.

For Longer Papers

Although for short essays the introduction is usually just one paragraph, longer argument or research papers may require a more substantial introduction. The first paragraph might consist of just the attention grabber and some narrative about the problem. Then you might have one or more paragraphs that provide background on the main topics of the paper and present the overall argument, concluding with your thesis statement.

Below is a sample of an introduction that is less effective because it doesn't apply the principles discussed above.

An Ineffective Introduction

Everyone uses math during their entire lives. Some people use math on the job as adults, and others used math when they were kids. The topic I have chosen to write about for this paper is how I use math in my life both as a child and as an adult. I use math to balance my checkbook and to budget my monthly expenses as an adult. When I was a child, I used math to run a lemonade stand. I will be talking more about these things in my paper.

In the introduction above, the opening line does not serve to grab the reader's attention. Instead, it is a statement of an obvious and mundane fact. The second sentence is also not very specific. A more effective attention grabber may point out a specific, and perhaps surprising, instance when adults use math in their daily lives, in order to show the reader why this is such as important topic to consider.

Next the writer "announces" her topic by stating, "The topic I have chosen to write about…" Although it is necessary to introduce your specific topic, you want to avoid making generic announcements that reference your assignment. What you have chosen to write about will be evident as your reader moves through the writing. Instead, you might try to make the reader see why this is such an important topic to discuss.

Finally, this sample introduction is lacking a clear thesis statement. The writer concludes with a vague statement: "I will be talking more about these things in my paper."  This kind of statement may be referred to as a "purpose statement," in which the writer states the topics that will be discussed. However, it is not yet working as a thesis statement because it fails to make an argument or claim about those topics. A thesis statement for this essay would clearly tell the reader what "things" you will be discussing and what point you will make about them.

Now let's look at how the above principles can be incorporated more effectively into an introduction.

A More Effective Introduction

"A penny saved is a penny earned," the well-known quote by Ben Franklin, is an expression I have never quite understood, because to me it seems that any penny—whether saved or spent—is still earned no matter what is done with it. My earliest memories of earning and spending money are when I was ten years old when I would sell Dixie cups of too-sweet lemonade and bags of salty popcorn to the neighborhood kids. From that early age, I learned the importance of money management and the math skills involved. I learned that there were four quarters in a dollar, and if I bought a non-food item—like a handful of balloons—that I was going to need to come up with six cents for every dollar I spent. I also knew that Kool-Aid packets were 25 cents each or that I could save money and get five of them for a dollar. Today, however, money management involves knowing more than which combinations of 10-cent, five-cent, and one-penny candies I can get for a dollar. Proper money management today involves knowing interest rates, balancing checkbooks, paying taxes, estimating my paycheck, and budgeting to make ends meet from month-to-month.

In the first line the writer uses a well-known quotation to introduce her topic.

The writer follows this "attention-grabber" with specific examples of earning and spending money. Compare how the specific details of the second example paint a better picture for the reader about what the writer learned about money as a child, rather than this general statement: "As a child, I used math to run a lemonade stand." In the first introduction, this statement leaves the reader to guess how the writer used math, but in the second introduction we can actually see what the child did and what she learned.

Notice, too, how the reader makes the transition from the lessons of childhood to the real focus of her paper in this sentence: "Today, however, money management involves knowing…."

This transition sentence effectively connects the opening narrative to the main point of the essay, her thesis: "Proper money management today involves knowing  interest rates, balancing checkbooks, paying taxes, estimating my paycheck, and budgeting to make ends meet from month-to-month ." This thesis also maps out for the reader the main points (underlined here) that will be discussed in the essay.

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• How to Start an Assignment Introduction Like an Expert

Every student wonders how to start an assignment introduction because this knowledge can keep them afloat through their endless years of school, college, and university. If you're here, you probably wonder that as well. Thankfully, there is nothing complicated about writing an introduction. This is how one starts an essay that teases the topics to come and explains your work’s final goal. Its importance is absolute.

Think about it. You open someone’s essay and see a very boring assignment introduction. Chances are, it’ll inform your opinion about the whole text right then and there, and even if the body has some fascinating facts, you might stay unimpressed anyway. First impressions usually stick with people. The guide prepared by StateOfWriting’s experts will teach you how you can grab your audience’s attention from the first seconds. In it, you’ll find explanations, examples, tips, and even common grading criteria that will help you start most compellingly.

How to Start an Assignment Introduction and What to Include

The introduction plays the same role in every paper, regardless of its topic. It must briefly address the content you will explore in the body and outline the needed steps. Its more subtle purpose is triggering genuine interest in your audience, motivating them to keep reading.

5 Elements of Every Introduction

Include these components in the introduction for assignment you’re working on:

• Hook. This would be the first sentence of your introduction. Does the word itself evoke any associations in you? When you hook someone, be it a fish or a person, you get to hold onto them. They become yours, and that’s exactly what you should strive for when writing your paper. Hit your readers with the very first line as powerfully as you can. It could be a piece of astonishing statistics that will make people gape in shock. Alternatively, you could go for an emotional approach, writing something that clenches your readers’ hearts in their chests. Whatever you choose, make it count.
• Background. The second element you’ll need for learning to know how to write introduction for assignment is the background. Professional tips for college application essay will show you how essential it is to make it interesting. This background represents your topic — it must explain what you’re investigating and how this subject came to be. For example, we’re analysing a TV show, Devil Judge. To present its background properly, we’d mention its title, airing date, and key figures. Then we’d briefly describe its plot.
• Justification. Next in figuring out how to write an introduction for assignment is deciding why you picked your topic. What makes it relevant to your subject? How can people benefit from reading about it? No need for much detail; just make a few references.
• Steps. This and the next component are interchangeable. In most cases, students need either one or another, depending on your professor's request. Outline the steps you’ll be undertaking when exploring your topic. If you will analyse the plot in the first body paragraph and dissect the characters in the second one, explain it to your readers. Provide a roadmap of your intentions. This approach is more suitable for really long papers.
• Thesis. How to write a good introduction for an assignment? By creating a powerful thesis. Most academic papers require it. It concludes your introduction, functioning as its last sentence. A thesis is a direct claim that embodies your essay’s entire essence. Even if people read it and nothing else, they should understand your work.

Specific Moments to Cover in Your Intro

You have a general picture of how to start writing an assignment now. It’s time to learn about the smaller and more specific details you should include in your introduction!

• Context. Always give your readers context. Disclose it carefully, bit by bit, instead of jumping straight to your main point. Using our TV show example, saying “Devil Judge is about revenge and power abuse” would be a bad start. It dumps too much information on a person and discloses too many relevant points. Be gradual and untangle your topic.
• Overview. When writing an introduction for an assignment, include a content overview. As mentioned above, it could be present as steps or a thesis. Either way, just demonstrate your plans to your readers — no introduction can function without it.
• Your perspective. Share your opinion about your topic. It doesn’t mean that you should use personal pronouns, just show what your position is by focusing your readers’ attention on a specific angle. Going back to our example, we could mention how the affection of Judge Kang toward his deceased brother coloured his perception of Ga On, who closely resembled him physically. This would narrow the focus down, displaying what we want to explore.
• Your goal. This aspect is closely linked to the previous one. Specify the end point of your essay by teasing the conclusion you plan to achieve.

Avoid These Mistakes When Writing Your Introduction

• Repetitions. Some students choose to repeat their title word by word in their paper. It’s not a good idea! Your assignment introduction sentence starters should be more unique. Come up with new words and phrases instead of engaging in self-plagiarism.
• General statements. Avoid vague sentences that suit any topic. An individual and relevant introduction will help make your paper look special. Be specific.
• Rambling paragraphs. Don’t try to introduce all possible information in your first paragraph. Being specific doesn’t mean talking non-stop. You should briefly present your ideas in the introduction and develop them in the body.
• Personal pronouns. Never use personal pronouns unless your task allows them. This covers “I, my, we, us, our,” etc.

5 Tips from Our Academic Experts

StateOfWriting’s British experts have written more essays than they can ever count. This extensive experience fuels their professionalism: they know how to create amazing papers, and they shared some key introduction-related insights with you.

• Create an introduction last. How to start an assignment for university? By writing it last. Yes, it may sound surprising, but this is how you can ensure you don’t need to rewrite anything later. An introduction has to reflect your whole paper. You should understand your findings and conclusions before crafting it.
• Size matters. Introduction shouldn’t take more than 10% of your total word count.
• Keep a balance between teasing and informing. Remember our assignment introduction writing tips from above? It’s important to share just the right details with readers.
• Edit this intro. Re-read your introduction a couple of times. Clean it thoroughly, removing all accidental mistakes and typos.
• Seek help. If any of these rules frustrate you, simply buy assignment online from professionals. Our writers could give you extra tips or take over the task completely.

Grading Criteria to Guide You on How to Write an Assignment Introduction

StateOfWriting’s experience spans across various fields. We know how college professors operate and what they expect to see in students’ papers. Take a look at their common grading points below. Remember them when you work on your introduction and adjust it accordingly.

• Conciseness. Professors want a short yet succinct introduction that covers all the necessary points without being overly long or overwhelming.
• Relevance. An introduction must be relevant to the subject and prompt. If the connection is loose, some points may be removed.
• Suspense. Not all professors pay attention to this aspect, but you’ll benefit from intriguing your audience and instilling a sense of anticipation in them.
• Research. Most essays require the use of credible academic studies. Cite at least the most important one in your intro to demonstrate your thoughtful approach. Get help with assignments if you’re struggling with this part.
• Thesis. All professors award separate points for a strong thesis statement.

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Practical Example of Effective Essay Introduction

We will provide you with a practical assignment introduction example to secure your theoretical knowledge. One of our top writers created it on the topic we already mentioned, the Devil Judge show. Find its analysis below and use this text as a template for your introduction!

The Dangers of Affection Transference in ‘Devil Judge’ Losing a loved one and then suddenly seeing a stranger with their face is the sharpest and most overwhelming experience. It can bring devastation and joy simultaneously, and this topic lies at the heart of ‘Devil Judge.’ This Korean show aired in 2021; it was written by Moon Yoo-Seok, who worked as a judge for over two decades (Livson, 2023). Kang Yohan, one of the protagonists, has lost his beloved older brother ten years before the show's start. When he meets Ga On, a junior judge sent to spy on him, he feels torn because Ga On bears a striking physical resemblance to his brother. The topic of affection transference is interesting because it is easy to use as a form of emotional manipulation. Moreover, the research in this area is lacking. As Joilis (2022) notes, when a person automatically attributes the qualities of their loved one to someone else over their resemblance, they face the risk of being emotionally compromised. Kang Yohan feels drawn to Ga On because he reminds him of his brother, and he becomes a victim of unwilling manipulation by starting to perceive Ga On as a part of his family sooner than naturally.

Analysis of Successful Assignment Introduction

Hook: The essay begins by thrusting the readers into a complicated emotional scenario and shortly describing the feelings it evokes. Background: In the next several sentences, we explore the meaning of ‘Devil Judge’, address its main characters, and show our willingness to focus on one specific theme, affection transference. Justification: The paper underlines how transference can be emotionally harmful to people and notes how scarce research is in this area, elevating our study's value. Thesis: We make a final claim that unites the show's plot with our chosen psychological phenomenon and introduces the points we’ll tackle, such as the resemblance between Ga On and Yohan’s brother, accidental manipulation, and the strengths of their feelings.

FAQ on How to Write an Introduction for an Assignment

• How many words should my introduction have?

The average introduction should be between 7% and 10% of your final word count. So, if your essay has 600 words, dedicate 60 of them to your first section.

• What sentence should I start my introduction with?

It could be a shocking statement, statistics, a quote, and even a question.

• What should I do when writing an introduction for a report?

Stay precise and objective. In this task, you don’t need to develop an individual position on a specific topic, just summarise it properly.

• How to write an introduction for a case study?

Address the details from this case study. Depending on your prompt, mention the situation and offer ways of analysing or resolving it.

• What should I do when writing an introduction for a dissertation?

This introduction will be longer. Follow our tips above, but be more detailed. Demonstrate your plan of action and research questions.

• How to write an introduction for a maths assignment?

The rules don’t change based on assignments. Be formal and thoughtful, and introduce your topic properly by mentioning some of its background.

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Steps To Write An Essay Introduction With Examples

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A well-crafted introduction sets the stage for a compelling essay. It captures the reader’s attention, provides essential background information, and outlines the central argument or thesis. This essay writing guide will help you write an essay introduction that engages your readers and clearly presents your essay’s purpose.

Understanding the Importance of an Essay Introduction

Before understanding how to begin an essay introduction, knowing its role in your essay is crucial. The introduction serves several vital purposes:

• Engages the reader: A well-crafted introduction grabs the reader’s attention and encourages them to read further.
• Introduces the topic: It provides a brief overview of the topic discussed, setting the context for the essay.
• Presents the thesis statement: This is the crux of your introduction, where you state your main argument or point of view.

What to Include in an Essay Introduction

Essay introductions vary based on the type of essay you’re writing, but in general, they all should include some common elements that are vital for setting the right tone and direction for your essay. Here is what to include in an essay introduction:

• Engaging Hook: Keep the reader interested from the start.
• Relevant Background: Only include information that directly supports understanding your argument.
• Clear Thesis Statement: Make your main argument concise, unambiguous and straightforward.
• Signposting: Guide the reader through your essay’s structure.

Steps to Write an Essay Introduction

Now, using this essay writing guide, let’s explore how to create a well-structured introduction in ten steps. Each step is crucial in writing an essay introduction that captures attention and presents the thesis.

• Start with a hook: Begin with something that is engaging. Use a startling fact, a quote from a well-known figure, or a riveting story related to your topic. This technique is vital in understanding how to begin an essay introduction as it draws the reader in and piques their curiosity.
• Provide context: Offer a backdrop to the issue at hand. It could involve historical context, current events, or a summary of necessary research. It’s about setting the stage for your thesis and helping readers understand the broader conversation in which your essay participates. Providing context is a fundamental part of any essay writing guide because it frames the significance of your discussion.
• Introduce the topic: Specify what your essay will explore. This clarification ensures that your audience understands the specific aspect of the broader topic you will address. It’s crucial in essay introductions to prepare the reader for what is to come.
• Define key terms: Clarify any terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to your readers. This step is essential to prevent misunderstandings and make your essay easier for a broader audience.
• Address the significance: Explain why the topic matters. Discuss its relevance to societal issues, its importance within academic fields, or its impact on future research. Highlighting the significance helps justify why the topic warrants discussion and is crucial in writing an essay introduction.
• State your thesis: Articulate your main argument or the position you will be taking in the essay. This thesis statement should be precise and assertive, providing a clear direction for the entire essay. It encapsulates the central theme of your essay introduction and sets expectations for the following analysis.
• Outline the structure: Give your readers a roadmap of what to expect in the essay. Outline the essential points that will be talked about in each section. This part of the introduction helps orient the reader and is recommended in any essay writing guide to enhance understanding of the essay’s structure.
• Highlight the stakes: Detail what is at risk in the discussion. What might change based on the outcomes of your argument? This element raises engagement by showing the essay topic’s real-world implications.
• Pose a rhetorical question: Introduce a thought-provoking question reflecting your topic. This technique can effectively challenge your readers and make them think critically about the issue at hand. It adds depth to your introduction and involves the audience in the conversation.
• Transition smoothly: End with a sentence that leads naturally into the main body of your essay. It could be a brief mention of the first point you will discuss or a sentence that seamlessly bridges the introduction to the body paragraphs. For your writing to flow and make sense, you need to use smooth transitions.

Introduction Examples for an Essay

To better illustrate how to begin an essay introduction, here are a few introduction examples for an essay:

• Narrative Essay : “As I navigated through the bustling streets of Tokyo, enveloped by the neon glow and the chorus of city sounds, it struck me: travel isn’t just about places; it’s about the people and experiences that shape our views and ourselves. This essay delves into how my experiences in Japan have profoundly influenced my understanding of culture and self.”
• Argumentative Essay : “While many argue that fracking is a highly effective method of extracting natural gas, its environmental and public health costs are too significant to ignore. This essay argues against the continued use of fracking techniques in the United States.”
• Expository Essay : “Technology has irrevocably changed the workplace, affecting how tasks are performed and redefining the nature of work. This essay examines the impact of technology on productivity and employee engagement.”

Key Takeaways

Mastering the craft of writing an essay introduction is crucial for any successful essay. By following the steps outlined in this essay writing guide and using the provided essay introduction examples, you can enhance your ability to engage and persuade your readers. Remember that the introduction is the first chance you have to make a good impact, so make it count by writing an opening that is clear, informative, and interesting.

Oxbridge Editing Support: Perfecting Your Essay Introduction

At Oxbridge Editing , we understand the difficulties students face when writing an essay introduction. Learning how to write an effective essay introduction is often one of the most challenging parts of essay writing. That’s why our editing services offer comprehensive support to help you master this crucial element of your paper.

Our team of experienced editors works meticulously to enhance the clarity and style of your introduction. We ensure that your opening paragraph is not only well-organised and impactful but also sets the tone for the rest of your essay. By focusing on structure, coherence, and engagement, we help you create an introduction that grabs attention and provides a clear roadmap for your argument.

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How to Write an Introduction for an Assignment: Easy Student Guide

Table of Contents

Why Assignment Introduction Matters?

Writing an introduction is not that hard, what makes a good introduction, an example of introduction for assignment, useful resources to get ease your intro writing.

Knowing how to start writing an assignment is basically knowing how to write an introduction for an assignment. No matter how easy it sounds, it can often become tricky. An introduction is a part of academic writing that always differs depending on initial instructions and the subject in question. For example, writing a reflective journal for your Nursing course would be different from some research paper.

We can sum it up by saying that introductions should always follow a clear purpose, which is to provide your target audience with a definite idea regarding your essay’s content.

It all comes down to the purpose of your introduction. It will either catch your reader’s interest or make them feel confused. Your introduction should focus on providing certain general data or statistics before narrowing things down. It makes it essential. It works as the preface to your thesis statement by making it sound valid. For example, if your thesis statement discusses the negative effects of modern video games, your introduction part will have to provide clear stats along with the significance of this problem for society and/or educators.

It is a well-known fact that college professors start paper evaluation by taking a closer look at your introduction, thesis statement, and the final part of the paper. It is another reason why setting the clear purpose of the introduction matters for your paper’s success and recognition.

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The most important is to understand your assignment structure. It means that you should not apply the same methods when dealing with your research paper or writing a compare-and-contrast essay.

Most importantly, it must be clear and convincing, including:

• A Strong Introductory Hook Sentence.
• Your Paper’s Purpose.
• An Explanatory Element.
• The Importance of Your Topic.
• Link to Your Thesis Statement.

If this kind of work sounds too confusing, you should ask yourself why this topic matters to you and why you have chosen it. Remember that your introduction should be about 10% of the total paper, not counting your thesis statement sentence. If you are not sure about your introduction’s content or do not know which structure would fit better, consider approaching assignment writing help . It is only natural to feel lost when starting with your paper.

Of course, the rules always differ, and we have our opinions that will not match everyone’s taste. Yet, the academic standards regarding how to write an introduction are quite clear. Coming up with a great introduction for assignment, make sure that it:

• Highlights the importance of your subject.
• Provides a definition of the topic you discuss.
• Offers the reasoning why you approach your topic.
• Provides an overview of your methodology or scientific approach.
• Highlights the major points you would like to discuss.
• Introduces your thesis.
• Provides statistical data and the purpose of your methodology.
• Makes the audience inspired.

Do not forget that even your creative writing tasks must have an inspiring introduction that talks about your purpose of writing.

By following the initial instructions outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to provide impactful statistics, introduce your topic effectively, and lead your readers towards a compelling thesis in your assignment’s introduction.

Let us take the topic of Special Education and Dyslexia as an introduction example:

As you can see, the introduction provides statistics and introduces the topic by leading it to a strong thesis (the last sentence).

Here is the list of helpful resources that you can use as you are brainstorming various ideas or think about how to come up with a perfect introduction for your essay:

• Quillbot. A paraphrasing tool that can help when your introduction just doesn’t feel right.
• Grammarly. A great tool to shape your introduction and bring it to perfection by polishing all the messy ot incorrect parts..
• Wordsmith. It helps to turn statistics into an insightful narrative. Try it out!

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How to Write an Assignment Introduction – 6 Best Tips

In essence, the writing tasks in academic tenure students are an integral part of any curriculum. Whether in high school, college, or university, they may also address the various issues and concerns with their friends and mentors about different academic writing assignments they receive.

The main purpose of all these assignments is to recognize how you can adequately express yourself through words and how much you understand a particular subject.

An introduction is a base of an assignment. It is challenging to prepare, and many students struggle to write an assignment. 

Some students have doubts about how to write assignment introduction. The current educational system has neglected to teach this vitally necessary writing method.

The best thing about writing is that you can learn and grow all the time by practicing. In this blog, I will discover significant tips for assignment writing, which is the art of writing an assignment introduction.

If you are struggling with your assignment, then you can get top-notch assignment help online service from our experts who will help you with any type of assignment.

What Is The Introduction Section?

Table of Contents

An assignment introduction segment is a crucial piece of any task or article. It is the main area of your task. This area generally has not more than a few passages.

Why is an introduction section important?

It is a fact that your “ first impression is your last impression .” So, if you write a good introduction to your assignment, you catch your examiner’s eye and get good grades.

The primary purpose of the introductory paragraph is to give the readers a real understanding of the topic of your assignment. The introduction gives the subject a generalization until the author narrows the discussion.

It is just like your assignment guide. It also provides context information regarding the assignment topic and an outline of your view or claim.

You can understand it more deeply if you go through some introduction examples. It gives the reader an overview of your essay and what it’s all about. 

What Are The Characteristics Of A Good Introduction?

• Ensure your writing is clear and precise, and there must be no language errors.
• The introduction section should be attention-grabbing to browse and attracts the reader to continue reading the rest of the assignment.
• The introduction should tell the reader what the full assignment is all concerning.

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Hope that you find this information useful. Happy learning, and best of luck with your assignment.

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Points To Remember Before Write Assignment Introduction

Before you searching the answer to your question about how to write an assignment introduction, you must keep these things in mind before writing it:

Proper introduction for a process documentation creates your experience a lot easier. It frees you from evaluating whether readers would be excited to continue your work. If you want to attract more readers, keep a few parameters before creating the introduction section It is a strong recommendation for the serious writers to take help from AI Content Detector Tools which are much efficient to secure your website ranking factor. You have a choice to check the best solution on Originality.AI in this regard.

1. Understand Your Readers 

To present a valid assignment to your audience, you must use audience-centric language rather than writer-centric. Ask yourself what the audience needs to understand from your writing. Are your audience expected to have an emotional reply to your writing? What do you need the audience to act, think, or feel about it? No matter how well-educated, we all bear the challenge of getting into someone’s shoes. Audience information is one of the keys to efficient completion.

2. Think About The Good Ideas

The thesis statement is your essay’s most significant sentence. So you’ve got to work over and over to get it accurate. Get assured you explain the research question acutely while writing your thesis statement. In the sentence of the thesis statement, your point of view should be clear. Avoid a lengthy, wordy, and complex statement of the thesis.

3. Avoid Explanation

Don’t try to explain anything to make your argument in the introduction section. You should drop the information part to the principal body. Just mention the primary points of the argument you plan to make later in the assignment. This point is important while searching for how to write an assignment introduction, as the introduction must be written in brief only.

4. Volume Matters

There is no doubt that the duration of the introduction depends on the subject, the format of the assignment, and the research work. However, it will be written in one paragraph. 

Remember that your introductory section should be more or less half a page long so that the audience can finish it one day. The introduction should be one-tenth of the entire assignment.

• The introduction must be 200-250 words when writing a 2000 words assignment.
• The introduction must be 350-400 words when writing a 3000 words assignment.

5. Don’t Act In The Dark

None of this comes as a surprise in academic writing. Academic writing is unlike writing fiction, where you can keep the audience in suspense. The entire assignment should be outlined in the introduction in academic literature, followed by a description in the central body. The following points will comprise an overview,

a. Related background data 

b. A Map of Essay 

c. A Sentence of Thesis

d. Your opinion.

Note: This is the rule for writing an introduction in the assignment. But there is no fast and robust rule for introduction writing. You need to be careful about the criteria you need to fulfill. Nevertheless, the above suggestions certainly will enable you to write a useful introduction. 

6 Tips For How To Write An Assignment Introduction?

These are the following tips and tricks to write assignment introduction.

Tip 1:- Try to Find A Good Idea To Write An Assignments

Your whole assignment should often be based on the assignment question’s answer, and the introduction is the first step of your assignment. Your direct response to your question on the assignment is your idea statement that should be involved in your introduction. Your assignment problem often starts with a large view and narrows down to some topic field. You should follow assignmentguru.com for an identical pattern while writing the introduction. Begin with a broad picture to attract readers, then give the readers particular information to engage in more reading.

Tip 2:- Choose Specific And General Perspectives

Remember, the subject needs an effective ‘big opening.’ For instance, an opening sentence that explains, ‘Human beings are capable of learning more than any other entity on earth’ would not be appropriate for the subject of ‘work and study.’ In another instance, the opening statement does not provide a world perspective in an assignment focusing on the city or state. So when you think about how to write an assignment introduction, you must take care of the opening statement as the success of the assignment introduction depends on it.

Tip 3:- Try To Write Assignment Introduction At The Beginning 

The best method to write assignment introduction is to write it at the beginning. The explanation for this is very clear when you write the introduction, you may have an indefinite view of the key points of the argument. Yet when you finish the material, you have good ideas about what you’ve written in your writing so far. When you follow all the rules, first write all of your proof and, finally, the introduction. Please ensure that your facts, conclusion, and introduction represent the claim you plan to bring forward.

Tip 4:- Use Creativity As An Opportunity

Don’t be scared to make and alter an experimental introduction in the first as you proceed with the subject. Writing an introduction is often the most challenging for any student since this is the first thing readers can search for. All you should do is write a normal introduction to get the work started. Complete the task, return to the introduction section again, and thoroughly review it. If rewriting is required, do not hesitate to do so.

Tip 5:- Give Earlier Attention To All Sentences

You may start with a quotation, short story, analogy, or even subject-related statistics. Create a strong impression on the audience by making that relevant information accessible. This is the point of thinking outside the box and using new skills. The reader won’t want to read the truth they already know. Uniquely, you need to find specific ways of expressing details or opinions. The students who want to know how to write an assignment introduction are searching for a unique way and methods to write it.

Tip 6:- Be Optimistic

Avoid phrases like “I will address about- in this article. Such sentences are of no concern to the reader’s mind. First of all, you need to leap in confidence in your story. Readers will find it hard to connect when you don’t believe in your content. So be sure of what you’re writing; only the readers will be involved in more reading.

• The purpose and objectives of your assignment .
• Why this assignment task is valuable?
• The scope of the assignment or what the assignment covers.
• A brief description of the organization of the assignment content.

All the above strategies help you in writing an effective and engaging introduction.

What Are The Most Common Strategies To Write Assignment Introduction?

These are the following most common strategies for writing assignment introductions. 

• Start with a board idea about the topic. After that, narrow down the discussion to the area you focus on in your assignment. We also need to explain why this assignment is useful and important.
• Then briefly discuss the tasks to be tackled, which usually includes the objectives and purpose of an assignment.
• Finally, give the reader a brief preview of your homework, which you will include in subsequent sections.

What Are The Elements Important To Write Assignment Introduction?

Here the following elements are crucial to write an assignment introduction. 

• The first and foremost most important element to writing the school or college assignment is the brief background of the study. 
• Apart from this, you need to add the context of your assignment in the introduction.
• Also, the other major elements to writing an assignment introduction are adding the contention, major points to study, the definition of the topic, why you are writing on this topic only, giving an outline, etc. 

Assignment Introduction Examples

These are the following assignment introduction examples;

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• How To Make An Assignment On MS Word With Easy Steps

Conclusion (Write Assignment Introduction)

From the above discussion, now you get the answer to your question, “how to write an assignment introduction.” All the above strategies and points help you in improving your writing. We hope that you find this information useful. Happy learning, and best of luck with your assignment.

If you need any help regarding your assignments, then you can contact CallTutors.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you say in a quick introduction.

The personal introductions should include the name, expected graduation date, major career goals, experience in projects, internship, co-op, etc.

How To Start An Assignment Introduction?

Follow these steps to start a good assignment introduction :

1. Define the main purpose of writing 2. Discuss the problems and try to solve them  3. What will be the tone and style of writing?

How Long Should An Assignment Introduction Be?

The introduction for the assignment should be three to five sentences long or 50-80 words.

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The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay | Steps & Examples

An academic essay is a focused piece of writing that develops an idea or argument using evidence, analysis, and interpretation.

There are many types of essays you might write as a student. The content and length of an essay depends on your level, subject of study, and course requirements. However, most essays at university level are argumentative — they aim to persuade the reader of a particular position or perspective on a topic.

The essay writing process consists of three main stages:

• Preparation: Decide on your topic, do your research, and create an essay outline.
• Writing : Set out your argument in the introduction, develop it with evidence in the main body, and wrap it up with a conclusion.
• Revision:  Check your essay on the content, organization, grammar, spelling, and formatting of your essay.

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Table of contents

Essay writing process, preparation for writing an essay, writing the introduction, writing the main body, writing the conclusion, essay checklist, lecture slides, frequently asked questions about writing an essay.

The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay .

For example, if you’ve been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you’ll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay , on the other hand, you’ll need to spend more time researching your topic and developing an original argument before you start writing.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Before you start writing, you should make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. There are a few key steps you can follow to make sure you’re prepared:

• Understand your assignment: What is the goal of this essay? What is the length and deadline of the assignment? Is there anything you need to clarify with your teacher or professor?
• Define a topic: If you’re allowed to choose your own topic , try to pick something that you already know a bit about and that will hold your interest.
• Do your research: Read  primary and secondary sources and take notes to help you work out your position and angle on the topic. You’ll use these as evidence for your points.
• Come up with a thesis:  The thesis is the central point or argument that you want to make. A clear thesis is essential for a focused essay—you should keep referring back to it as you write.
• Create an outline: Map out the rough structure of your essay in an outline . This makes it easier to start writing and keeps you on track as you go.

Once you’ve got a clear idea of what you want to discuss, in what order, and what evidence you’ll use, you’re ready to start writing.

The introduction sets the tone for your essay. It should grab the reader’s interest and inform them of what to expect. The introduction generally comprises 10–20% of the text.

1. Hook your reader

The first sentence of the introduction should pique your reader’s interest and curiosity. This sentence is sometimes called the hook. It might be an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or a bold statement emphasizing the relevance of the topic.

Let’s say we’re writing an essay about the development of Braille (the raised-dot reading and writing system used by visually impaired people). Our hook can make a strong statement about the topic:

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

2. Provide background on your topic

Next, it’s important to give context that will help your reader understand your argument. This might involve providing background information, giving an overview of important academic work or debates on the topic, and explaining difficult terms. Don’t provide too much detail in the introduction—you can elaborate in the body of your essay.

3. Present the thesis statement

Next, you should formulate your thesis statement— the central argument you’re going to make. The thesis statement provides focus and signals your position on the topic. It is usually one or two sentences long. The thesis statement for our essay on Braille could look like this:

As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness.

4. Map the structure

In longer essays, you can end the introduction by briefly describing what will be covered in each part of the essay. This guides the reader through your structure and gives a preview of how your argument will develop.

The invention of Braille marked a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by blind and visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Write your essay introduction

The body of your essay is where you make arguments supporting your thesis, provide evidence, and develop your ideas. Its purpose is to present, interpret, and analyze the information and sources you have gathered to support your argument.

Length of the body text

The length of the body depends on the type of essay. On average, the body comprises 60–80% of your essay. For a high school essay, this could be just three paragraphs, but for a graduate school essay of 6,000 words, the body could take up 8–10 pages.

Paragraph structure

To give your essay a clear structure , it is important to organize it into paragraphs . Each paragraph should be centered around one main point or idea.

That idea is introduced in a  topic sentence . The topic sentence should generally lead on from the previous paragraph and introduce the point to be made in this paragraph. Transition words can be used to create clear connections between sentences.

After the topic sentence, present evidence such as data, examples, or quotes from relevant sources. Be sure to interpret and explain the evidence, and show how it helps develop your overall argument.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

See the full essay example

The conclusion is the final paragraph of an essay. It should generally take up no more than 10–15% of the text . A strong essay conclusion :

• Returns to your thesis
• Ties together your main points
• Shows why your argument matters

A great conclusion should finish with a memorable or impactful sentence that leaves the reader with a strong final impression.

What not to include in a conclusion

To make your essay’s conclusion as strong as possible, there are a few things you should avoid. The most common mistakes are:

• Including new arguments or evidence
• Undermining your arguments (e.g. “This is just one approach of many”)
• Using concluding phrases like “To sum up…” or “In conclusion…”

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Write your essay conclusion

Checklist: Essay

My essay follows the requirements of the assignment (topic and length ).

My introduction sparks the reader’s interest and provides any necessary background information on the topic.

My introduction contains a thesis statement that states the focus and position of the essay.

I use paragraphs to structure the essay.

I use topic sentences to introduce each paragraph.

Each paragraph has a single focus and a clear connection to the thesis statement.

I make clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas.

My conclusion doesn’t just repeat my points, but draws connections between arguments.

I don’t introduce new arguments or evidence in the conclusion.

I have given an in-text citation for every quote or piece of information I got from another source.

I have included a reference page at the end of my essay, listing full details of all my sources.

My citations and references are correctly formatted according to the required citation style .

My essay has an interesting and informative title.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (e.g. font, page numbers, line spacing).

Your essay meets all the most important requirements. Our editors can give it a final check to help you submit with confidence.

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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How to Write an Introduction for Assignment?

Academic writing is an important part of every curriculum whether you are in high school or you are a university student. You might always be discussing the several issues and concerns about various academic writing projects you get with your friends and mentors. The objective of all such assignments is to see how better you can express yourself through words and how much you know about a subject. The best part about writing is that you can always learn and evolve. In this article, you will learn an important aspect of assignment writing that is the art of writing the introduction of an assignment.

Why an Introduction is Important in Academic Writing Assignments?

As a student, you might not be able to develop clear and concise paragraphs. If you often wonder who can do my assignment more academically then you should start with learning how to write an introduction for an assignment. Whether you are writing an essay, report or dissertation, an introductory paragraph is always required. If you prepare that paragraph well you might impress your readers from the very beginning.

Also Read : Experts Tips on College Assignment Formats & Structure with Examples

The main aim of the introductory paragraph is to provide the readers with a clear idea about the topic of your assignment.  The introduction gives a generalization about the topic before a writer narrows down their discussion. It is just like a guide to your assignment. It must also include some background details of the assignment topic and an outline of what is your opinion or argument. You will understand in a deeper sense if you go through some introduction examples.

The Ingredients of An Introduction

There are some points that one should consider to provide a good introduction to their assignment. You may not incorporate all of them but, in general, you should try including some of these points in your introductory paragraph. While you read some introduction paragraph examples try identifying which points had the writer included in them.

• Highlight the importance of the subject
• The definition of the topic being discussed
• The reason why you are writing on this topic
• An overview of your approach on the topic
• Highlight the points that you want to discuss in the assignment
• State some previous works about the topic
• State some limitations about the topic

Consider the sample introductory paragraph given below. You may see that the paragraph starts with a central issue. It gives a little background of the topic and establishes the argument that will be discussed further in the essay.

How to Write An Introduction for A Report?

So above we discussed some generalized points about the introduction of an academic assignment. Now let us see how to write an introduction for a report.

Establish A Background

You may mention something about the previous research on the topic. You may mention all the issues that you have researched about the topic and you want to discuss further in the report. This will give your readers a reason why they should read your report.

Bridging The Gap

You should also mention the gaps in the previous research and how you are making efforts to bridge those gaps. Mention what all extra information you are going to provide that will expand your reader’s knowledge.

State Your Objective

Once you have established a background state your objectives. Write your thesis statement or the hypothesis. You may discuss the structure of your report here and list all the findings of the report. The following example gives a clear idea of the format that we are discussing.

How to Write an Introduction for A Dissertation/ Thesis?

The procedure to write an introduction for a long piece of writing is generally similar to what we have discussed so far. Still, it is important to know the little details that you should take care of. Our experts always suggest the students go through the introduction example for assignment before starting their writing process. Many times students have a lot of ideas in mind but they just cannot paraphrase them. They may avail our affordable writing services at such times to seek clarity. Our writers will help them convert their ideas into a powerful piece of writing.

As far as dissertations are concerned you must focus on writing an attention-grabbing introduction because then only you will be able to convince the reader to read your paper further. If you will consider any introduction paragraph examples of dissertations you will find that the writers generally maintain suspense. They never reveal everything about their research straightaway in the introductory paragraph. Apart from the general introduction of the dissertation, you can also provide an introduction to each chapter. This will widen your scope of including references and you can always remind the reader of your purpose of writing this dissertation.

Also Read: Tips and Examples of The Conclusion Section of Assignments

Some Extra Tips from Our Experts

By now we expect that you might have understood what an introduction is, what all points you should include in an introduction and how to write an introduction for an assignment whether it is an essay, report or a dissertation. You should always remember that the introduction should be eye-catching. It should build up curiosity among the readers. Your introduction should not just restate the question of your assignment title . It should rather give your readers an outline of what is there in your assignment.

Most importantly, introduction writing is not storytelling. It should be written with a focused approach. Consider your instructor’s guidelines about the word limit of the assignment introduction and stick to it if you want to gain better marks. Do not forget to consider our experts for fresh ideas and different introduction writing examples.

Need Help with writing an introduction for an assignment?

An introduction task segment is a key element of any task or item. It’s your task’s main area. Generally, this region has only a few passages.

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• Open access
• Published: 06 August 2024

AI and ethics: Investigating the first policy responses of higher education institutions to the challenge of generative AI

• Attila Dabis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4924-7664 1 &
• Csaba Csáki   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8245-1002 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1006 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

This article addresses the ethical challenges posed by generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in higher education and explores the first responses of universities to these challenges globally. Drawing on five key international documents from the UN, EU, and OECD, the study used content analysis to identify key ethical dimensions related to the use of generative AI in academia, such as accountability, human oversight, transparency, or inclusiveness. Empirical evidence was compiled from 30 leading universities ranked among the top 500 in the Shanghai Ranking list from May to July 2023, covering those institutions that already had publicly available responses to these dimensions in the form of policy documents or guidelines. The paper identifies the central ethical imperative that student assignments must reflect individual knowledge acquired during their education, with human individuals retaining moral and legal responsibility for AI-related wrongdoings. This top-down requirement aligns with a bottom-up approach, allowing instructors flexibility in determining how they utilize generative AI especially large language models in their own courses. Regarding human oversight, the typical response identified by the study involves a blend of preventive measures (e.g., course assessment modifications) and soft, dialogue-based sanctioning procedures. The challenge of transparency induced the good practice of clear communication of AI use in course syllabi in the first university responses examined by this study.

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Introduction.

The competition in generative artificial intelligence (AI) ignited by the arrival of ChatGPT, the conversational platform based on a large language model (LLM) in late November 2022 (OpenAI, 2022 ) had a shocking effect even on those who are not involved in the industry (Rudolph et al. 2023 ). Within four months, on 22 March 2023, an open letter was signed by several hundred IT professionals, corporate stakeholders, and academics calling on all AI labs to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 (i.e., those that may trick a human being into believing it is conversing with a peer rather than a machine) for at least six months (Future of Life Institute, 2023 ).

Despite these concerns, competition in generative AI and LLMs does not seem to lose momentum, forcing various social systems to overcome the existential distress they might feel about the changes and the uncertainty of what the future may bring (Roose, 2023 ). Organisations and individuals from different sectors of the economy and various industries are looking for adaptive strategies to accommodate the emerging new normal. This includes lawmakers, international organisations, employers, and employees, as well as academic and higher education institutions (Ray, 2023 ; Wach et al. 2023 ). This fierce competition generates gaps in real-time in everyday and academic life, the latter of which is also trying to make sense of the rapid technological advancement and its effects on university-level education (Perkins, 2023 ). Naturally, these gaps can only be filled, and relevant questions answered much slower by academia, making AI-related research topics timely.

This article aims to reduce the magnitude of these gaps and is intended to help leaders, administrators, teachers, and students better understand the ramifications of AI tools on higher education institutions. It will do so by providing a non-exhaustive snapshot of how various universities around the world responded to generative AI-induced ethical challenges in their everyday academic lives within six-eights months after the arrival of ChatGPT. Thus, the research had asked what expectations and guidelines the first policies introduced into existing academic structures to ensure the informed, transparent, responsible and ethical use of the new tools of generative AI (henceforth GAI) by students and teachers. Through reviewing and evaluating first responses and related difficulties the paper helps institutional decision-makers to create better policies to address AI issues specific to academia. The research reported here thus addressed actual answers to the question of what happened at the institutional (policy) level as opposed to what should happen with the use of AI in classrooms. Based on such a descriptive overview, one may contemplate normative recommendations and their realistic implementability.

Given the global nature of the study’s subject matter, the paper presents examples from various continents. Even though it was not yet a widespread practice to adopt separate, AI-related guidelines, the research focused on universities that had already done so quite early. Furthermore, as best practices most often accrue from the highest-ranking universities, the analysis only considered higher education institutions that were represented among the top 500 universities in the Shanghai Ranking list (containing 3041 Universities at the time), a commonly used source to rank academic excellence. Footnote 1 The main sources of this content analysis are internal documents (such as Codes of Ethics, Academic Regulations, Codes of Practice and Procedure, Guidelines for Students and Teachers or similar policy documents) from those institutions whose response to the GAI challenge was publicly accessible.

The investigation is organised around AI-related ethical dilemmas as concluded from relevant international documents, such as the instruments published by the UN, the EU, and the OECD (often considered soft law material). Through these sources, the study inductively identifies the primary aspects that these AI guidelines mention and can be connected to higher education. Thus it only contains concise references to the main ethical implications of the manifold pedagogical practices in which AI tools can be utilised in the classroom. The paper starts with a review of the challenges posed by AI technology to higher education with special focus on ethical dilemmas. Section 3 covers the research objective and the methodology followed. Section 4 presents the analysis of the selected international documents and establishes a list of key ethical principles relevant in HE contexts and in parallel presents the analysis of the examples distilled from the institutional policy documents and guidelines along that dimension. The paper closes with drawing key conclusions as well as listing limitations and ideas for future research.

Generative AI and higher education: Developments in the literature

General ai-related challenges in the classroom from a historical perspective.

Jacque Ellul fatalistically wrote already in 1954 that the “infusion of some more or less vague sentiment of human welfare” cannot fundamentally alter technology’s “rigorous autonomy”, bringing him to the conclusion that “technology never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use” (Ellul, 1964 , p. 97). Footnote 2 Jumping ahead nearly six decades, the above quote comes to the fore, among others, when evaluating the moral and ethical aspects of the services offered by specific software programs, like ChatGPT. While they might be trained to give ethical answers, these moral barriers can be circumvented by prompt injection (Blalock, 2022 ), or manipulated with tricks (Alberti, 2022 ), so generative AI platforms can hardly be held accountable for the inaccuracy of their responses Footnote 3 or how the physical user who inserted a prompt will make use of the output. Indeed, the AI chatbot is now considered to be a potentially disruptive technology in higher education practices (Farazouli et al. 2024 ).

Educators and educational institution leaders have from the beginning sought solutions on how “to use a variety of the strategies and technologies of the day to help their institutions adapt to dramatically changing social needs” (Miller, 2023 , p. 3). Education in the past had always had high hopes for applying the latest technological advances (Reiser, 2001 ; Howard and Mozejko, 2015 ), including the promise of providing personalised learning or using the latest tools to create and manage courses (Crompton and Burke, 2023 ).

The most basic (and original) educational settings include three components: the blackboard with chalk, the instructor, and textbooks as elementary “educational technologies” at any level (Reiser, 2001 ). Beyond these, one may talk about “educational media” which, once digital technology had entered the picture, have progressed from Computer Based Learning to Learning Management Systems to the use of the Internet, and lately to online shared learning environments with various stages in between including intelligent tutoring system, Dialogue-based Tutoring System, and Exploratory Learning Environment and Artificial Intelligence (Paek and Kim, 2021 ). And now the latest craze is about the generative form of AI often called conversational chatbot (Rudolph et al. 2023 ).

The above-mentioned promises appear to be no different in the case of using generative AI tools in education (Baskara, 2023a ; Mhlanga, 2023 ; Yan et al. 2023 ). The general claim is that GAI chatbots have transformative potential in HE (Mollick and Mollick, 2022 ; Ilieva et al. 2023 ). It is further alleged, that feedback mechanisms supposedly provided by GAI can be used to provide personalised guidance to students (Baskara, 2023b ). Some argue, that “AI education should be expanded and improved, especially by presenting realistic use cases and the real limitations of the technology, so that students are able to use AI confidently and responsibly in their professional future” (Almaraz-López et al. 2023 , p. 1). It is still debated whether the hype is justified, yet the question still remains, how to address the issues arising in the wake of the educational application of GAI tools (Ivanov, 2023 ; Memarian and Doleck, 2023 ).

Generative AI tools, such as their most-known representative, ChatGPT impact several areas of learning and teaching. From the point of view of students, chatbots may help with so-called Self-Regulated or Self-Determined Learning (Nicol and Macfarlane‐Dick, 2006 ; Baskara, 2023b ), where students either dialogue with chatbots or AI help with reviewing student work, even correcting it and giving feedback (Uchiyama et al. 2023 ). There are innovative ideas on how to use AI to support peer feedback (Bauer et al. 2023 ). Some consider that GAI can provide adaptive and personalised environments (Qadir, 2023 ) and may offer personalised tutoring (see, for example, Limo et al. ( 2023 ) on ChatGPT as a virtual tutor for personalized learning experiences). Furthermore, Yan et al. ( 2023 ) lists nine different categories of educational tasks that prior studies have attempted to automate using LLMs: Profiling and labelling (various educational or related content), Detection, Assessment and grading, Teaching support (in various educational and communication activities), Prediction, Knowledge representation, Feedback, Content generation (outline, questions, cases, etc.), Recommendation.

From the lecturers’ point of view, one of the most argued impacts is that assessment practices need to be revisited (Chaudhry et al. 2023 ; Gamage et al. 2023 ; Lim et al. 2023 ). For example, ChatGPT-written responses to exam questions may not be distinguished from student-written answers (Rudolph et al. 2023 ; Farazouli et al. 2024 ). Furthermore, essay-type works are facing special challenges (Sweeney, 2023 ). On the other hand, AI may be utilised to automate a range of educational tasks, such as test question generation, including open-ended questions, test correction, or even essay grading, feedback provision, analysing student feedback surveys, and so on (Mollick and Mollick, 2022 ; Rasul et al. 2023 ; Gimpel et al. 2023 ).

There is no convincing evidence, however, that either lecturers or dedicated tools are able to distinguish AI-written and student-written text with high enough accuracy that can be used to prove unethical behaviour in all cases (Akram, 2023 ). This led to concerns regarding the practicality and ethicality of such innovations (Yan et al. 2023 ). Indeed, the appearance of ChatGPT in higher education has reignited the (inconclusive) debate on the potential and risks associated with AI technologies (Ray, 2023 ; Rudolph et al. 2023 ).

When new technologies appear in or are considered for higher education, debates about their claimed advantages and potential drawbacks heat up as they are expected to disrupt traditional practices and require teachers to adapt to their potential benefits and drawbacks (as collected by Farrokhnia et al. 2023 ). One key area of such debates is the ethical issues raised by the growing accessibility of generative AI and discursive chatbots.

Key ethical challenges posed by AI in higher education

Yan et al. ( 2023 ), while investigating the practicality of AI in education in general, also consider ethicality in the context of educational technology and point out that related debates over the last decade (pre-ChatGPT, so to say), mostly focused on algorithmic ethics, i.e. concerns related to data mining and using AI in learning analytics. At the same time, the use of AI by teachers or, especially, by students has received less attention (or only under the scope or traditional human ethics). However, with the arrival of generative AI chatbots (such as ChatGPT), the number of publications about their use in higher education grew rapidly (Rasul et al. 2023 ; Yan et al. 2023 ).

The study by Chan ( 2023 ) offers a (general) policy framework for higher education institutions, although it focuses on one location and is based on the perceptions of students and teachers. While there are studies that collect factors to be considered for the ethical use of AI in HE, they appear to be restricted to ChatGPT (see, for example, Mhlanga ( 2023 )). Mhlanga ( 2023 ) presents six factors: respect for privacy, fairness, and non-discrimination, transparency in the use of ChatGPT, responsible use of AI (including clarifying its limitations), ChatGPT is not a substitute for human teachers, and accuracy of information. The framework by Chan ( 2023 ) is aimed at creating policies to teach students about GAI and considers three dimensions: pedagogical, governance, and operational. Within those dimensions, ten key areas identified covering ethical concerns such as academic integrity versus academic misconduct and related ethical dilemmas (e.g. cheating or plagiarism), data privacy, transparency, accountability and security, equity in access to AI technologies, critical AI literacy, over-reliance on AI technologies (not directly ethical), responsible use of AI (in general), competencies impeded by AI (such as leadership and teamwork). Baskara ( 2023b ), while also looking at ChatGPT only, considers the following likely danger areas: privacy, algorithmic bias issues, data security, and the potential negative impact of ChatGPT on learners’ autonomy and agency, The paper also questions the possible negative impact of GAI on social interaction and collaboration among learners. Although Yan et al. ( 2023 ) considers education in general (not HE in particular) during its review of 118 papers published since 2017 on the topic of AI ethics in education, its list of areas to look at is still relevant: transparency (of the models used), privacy (related to data collection and use by AI tools), equality (such as availability of AI tools in different languages), and beneficence (e.g. avoiding bias and avoiding biased and toxic knowledge from training data). While systematically reviewing recent publications about AI’s “morality footprint” in higher education, Memarian and Doleck ( 2023 ) consider the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) approach as their framework of analyses. They note that “Ethics” appears to be the most used term as it serves as a general descriptor, while the other terms are typically only used in their descriptive sense, and their operationalisation is often lacking in related literature.

Regarding education-related data analytics, Khosravi et al. ( 2022 ) argue that educational technology that involves AI should consider accountability, explainability, fairness, interpretability and safety as key ethical concerns. Ferguson et al. ( 2016 ) also looked at learning analytics solutions using AI and warned of potential issues related to privacy, beneficence, and equality. M.A. Chaudhry et al. ( 2022 ) emphasise that enhancing the comprehension of stakeholders of a new educational AI system is the most important task, which requires making all information and decision processes available to those affected, therefore the key concern is related to transparency according to their arguments.

As such debates continue, it is difficult to identify an established definition of ethical AI in HE. It is clear, however, that the focus should not be on detecting academic misconduct (Rudolph et al. 2023 ). Instead, practical recommendations are required. This is especially true as even the latest studies focus mostly on issues related to assessment practices (Chan, 2023 ; Farazouli et al. 2024 ) and often limit their scope to ChatGPT (Cotton et al. 2024 ) (this specific tool still dominates discourses of LLMs despite the availability of many other solutions since its arrival). At the same time, the list of issues addressed appears to be arbitrary, and most publications do not look at actual practices on a global scale. Indeed, reviews of actual current practices of higher education institutions are rare, and this aspect is not yet the focus of recent HE AI ethics research reports.

As follows from the growing literature and the debate shaping up about the implications of using GAI tools in HE, there was a clear need for a systematic review of how first responses in actual academic policies and guidelines in practice have represented and addressed known ethical principles.

Research objective and methodology

In order to contribute to the debate on the impact of GAI on HE, this study aimed to review how leading institutions had reacted to the arrival of generative AI (such as ChatGPT) and what policies or institutional guidelines they have put in place shortly after. The research intended to understand whether key ethical principles were reflected in the first policy responses of HE institutions and, if yes, how they were handled.

As potential principles can diverge and could be numerous, as well as early guidelines may cover wide areas, the investigation is intended to be based on a few broad categories instead of trying to manage a large set of ideals and goals. To achieve this objective, the research was executed in three steps:

It was started with identifying and collecting general ethical ideals, which were then translated and structured for the context of higher education. A thorough content analysis was performed with the intention to put emphasis on positive values instead of simply focusing on issues or risks and their mitigation.

Given those positive ideals, this research collected actual examples of university policies and guidelines already available: this step was executed from May to July 2023 to find early responses addressing such norms and principles developed by leading HE institutions.

The documents identified were then analysed to understand how such norms and principles had been addressed by leading HE institutions.

As a result, this research managed to highlight and contrast differing practical views, and the findings raise awareness about the difficulties of creating relevant institutional policies. The research considered the ethics of using GAI and not expectations towards their development. The next two sections provide details of the two steps.

Establishing ethical principles for higher education

While the review of relevant ethical and HE literature (as presented above) was not fully conclusive, it highlighted the importance and need for some ideals specific to HE. Therefore, as a first step, this study sought to find highly respected sources of such ethical dimensions by executing a directed content analysis of relevant international regulatory and policy recommendations.

In order to establish what key values and ideas drive the formation of future AI regulations in general, Corrêa et al. ( 2023 ) investigated 200 publications discussing governance policies and ethical guidelines for using AI as proposed by various organisations (including national governments and institutions, civil society and academic organisations, private companies, as well as international bodies). The authors were also interested in whether there are common patterns or missing ideals and norms in this extensive set of proposals and recommendations. As the research was looking for key principles and normative attributes that could form a common ground for the comparison of HE policies, this vast set of documents was used to identify internationally recognised bodies that have potential real influence in this arena and decided to consider the guidelines and recommendations they have put forward for the ethical governance of AI. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, the following sources were selected (some organisations, such as the EU were represented by several bodies):

European Commission ( 2021 ): Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Laying Down Harmonised Rules on Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act) and Amending Certain Union Legislative Acts (2021/0106 (COD)) . Footnote 4

European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education ( 2021 ): Report on artificial intelligence in education, culture and the audiovisual sector (2020/2017(INI)) . Footnote 5

High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (EUHLEX) ( 2019 ): Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI . Footnote 6

UNESCO ( 2022 ): Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (SHS/BIO/PI/2021/1) . Footnote 7

OECD ( 2019 ): Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence (OECD/LEGAL/0449) . Footnote 8

The ethical dilemmas established by these international documents (most of which is considered soft law material) were then used to inductively identify the primary aspects around which the investigation of educational AI principles may be organised.

Among the above documents, the EUHLEX material is the salient one as it contains a Glossary that defines and explains, among others, the two primary concepts that will be used in this paper: “artificial intelligence” and “ethics”. As this paper is, to a large extent, based on the deducted categorisation embedded in these international documents, it will follow suit in using the above terms as EUHLEX did, supporting it with the definitions contained in the other four referenced international documents. Consequently, artificial intelligence (AI) systems are referred to in this paper as software and hardware systems designed by humans that “act in the physical or digital dimension by perceiving their environment through data acquisition, interpreting the collected structured or unstructured data, reasoning on the knowledge, or processing the information, derived from this data and deciding the best action(s) to take to achieve the given goal” (EUHLEX, 2019 ). With regards to ethics, the EUHLEX group defines this term, in general as an academic discipline which is a subfield of philosophy, dealing with questions like “What is a good action?”, “What is the value of a human life?”, “What is justice?”, or “What is the good life?”. It also mentions that academia distinguishes four major fields: (i) Meta-ethics, (ii) normative ethics, (iii) descriptive ethics, and (iv) applied ethics ” (EUHLEX, 2019 , p. 37). Within these, AI ethics belongs to the latter group of applied ethics that focuses on the practical issues raised by the design, development, implementation, and use of AI systems. By extension, the application of AI systems in higher education also falls under the domain of applied ethics.

The selection of sample universities

The collection of cases started with the AI guidelines compiled by the authors as members of the AI Committee at their university from May to July 2023. The AI Committee consisted of 12 members and investigated over 150 cases to gauge international best practices of GAI use in higher education when formulating a policy recommendation for their own university leadership. Given the global nature of the subject matter, examples from various continents were collected. From this initial pool authors narrowed the scope to the Top 500 higher education institutions of the Shanghai Ranking list for this study, as best practices most often accrue from the highest-ranking universities. Finally, only those institutions were included which, at the time of data collection, have indeed had publicly available policy documents or guidelines with clearly identifiable ethical considerations (such as relevant internal documents, Codes of Ethics, Academic Regulations, Codes of Practice and Procedure, or Guidelines for Students and Teachers). By the end of this selection process, 30 samples proved to be substantiated enough to be included in this study (presented in Table 1 ).

All documents were contextually analysed and annotated by both authors individually looking for references or mentions of ideas, actions or recommendations related to the ethical principles identified during the first step of the research. These comments were then compared and commonalities analysed regarding the nature and goal of the ethical recommendation.

Principles and practices of responsible use of AI in higher education

Ai-related ethical codes forming the base of this investigation.

A common feature of the selected AI ethics documents issued by international organisations is that they enumerate a set of ethical principles based on fundamental human values. The referenced international documents have different geographical- and policy scopes, yet they overlap in their categorisation of the ethical dimensions relevant to this research, even though they might use discrepant language to describe the same phenomenon (a factor we took into account when establishing key categories). For example, what EUHLEX dubs as “Human agency and oversight” is addressed by UNESCO under the section called “Human oversight and determination”, yet they essentially cover the same issues and recommended requirements. Among the many principles enshrined in these documents, the research focuses on those that can be directly linked to the everyday education practices of universities in relation to AI tools, omitting those that, within this context, are less situation-dependent and should normally form the overarching basis of the functioning of universities at all times, such as: respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, refraining from all forms of discrimination, the right to privacy and data protection, or being aware of environmental concerns and responsibilities regarding sustainable development. As pointed out by Nikolinakos ( 2023 ), such principles and values provide essential guidance not only for development but also during the deployment and use of AI systems. Synthesising the common ethical codes in these instruments has led to the following cluster of ethical principles that are directly linked to AI-related higher education practices:

Accountability and responsibility;

Human agency and oversight;

Transparency and explainability

Inclusiveness and diversity.

The following subsections will give a comprehensive definition of these ethical areas and relate them to higher education expectations. Each subsection will first explain the corresponding ethical cluster, then present the specific university examples, concluding with a summary of the identified best practice under that particular cluster.

Accountability and responsibility

Definition in ethical codes and relevance.

The most fundamental requirements, appearing in almost all relevant documents, bring forward the necessity that mechanisms should be implemented to ensure responsibility and accountability for AI systems and their outcomes. These cover expectations both before and after their deployment, including development and use. They entail the basic requirements of auditability (i.e. the enablement of the assessment of algorithms), clear roles in the management of data and design processes (as a means for contributing to the trustworthiness of AI technology), the minimalisation and reporting of negative impacts (focusing on the possibility of identifying, assessing, documenting and reporting on the potential negative impacts of AI systems), as well as the ability of redress (understood as the capability to utilise mechanisms that offer legal and practical remedy when unjust adverse impact occurs) (EUHLEX, 2019 , pp. 19–20).

Additionally, Points 35–36 of the UNESCO recommendations remind us that it is imperative to “attribute ethical and legal responsibility for any stage of the life cycle of AI systems, as well as in cases of remedy related to AI systems, to physical persons or to existing legal entities. AI system can never replace ultimate human responsibility and accountability” (UNESCO, 2022 , p. 22).

The fulfilment of this fundamental principle is also expected from academic authors, as per the announcements of some of the largest publishing houses in the world. Accordingly, AI is not an author or co-author, Footnote 9 and AI-assisted technologies should not be cited as authors either, Footnote 10 given that AI-generated content cannot be considered capable of initiating an original piece of research without direction from human authors. The ethical guidelines of Wiley ( 2023 ) stated that ”[AI tools] also cannot be accountable for a published work or for research design, which is a generally held requirement of authorship, nor do they have legal standing or the ability to hold or assign copyright.” Footnote 11 This research angle carries over to teaching as well since students are also expected to produce outputs that are the results of their own work. Furthermore, they also often do their own research (such as literature search and review) in support of their projects, homework, thesis, and other forms of performance evaluation.

Accountability and responsibility in university first responses

The rapidly changing nature of the subject matter poses a significant challenge for scholars to assess the state of play of human responsibility. This is well exemplified by the reversal of hearts by some Australian universities (see Rudolph et al. ( 2023 ) quoting newspaper articles) who first disallowed the use of AI by students while doing assignments, just to reverse that decision a few months later and replace it by a requirement of disclosing the use of AI in homeworks. Similarly, Indian governments have been oscillating between a non-regulatory approach to foster an “innovation-friendly environment” for their universities in the summer of 2023 (Liu, 2023 ), only to roll back on this pledge a few months later (Dhaor, 2023 ).

Beyond this regulatory entropy, a fundamental principle enshrined in university codes of ethics across the globe is that students need to meet existing rules of scientific referencing and authorship. Footnote 12 In other words, they should refrain from any form of plagiarism in all their written work (including essays, theses, term papers, or in-class presentations). Submitting any work and assessments created by someone or something else (including AI-generated content) as if it was their own usually amounts to either a violation of scientific referencing, plagiarism or is considered to be a form of cheating (or a combination of these), depending on the terminology used by the respective higher education institution.

As a course description of Johns Hopkins puts it, “academic honesty is required in all work you submit to be graded …., you must solve all homework and programming assignments without the help of outside sources (e.g., GAI tools)” (Johns Hopkins University, 2023 ).

The Tokyo Institute of Technology applies a more flexible approach, as they “trust the independence of the students and expect the best use” of AI systems from them based on good sense and ethical standards. They add, however, that submitting reports that rely almost entirely on the output of GenAI is “highly improper, and its continued use is equivalent to one’s enslavement to the technology” (Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2023 ).

In the case of York University, the Senate’s Academic Standards, Curriculum, and Pedagogy Committee clarified in February 2023 that students are not authorised to use “text-, image-, code-, or video-generating AI tools when completing their academic work unless explicitly permitted by a specific instructor in a particular course” (York University Senate, 2023 ).

In the same time frame (6 February 2023), the University of Oxford stated in a guidance material for staff members that “the unauthorised use of AI tools in exams and other assessed work is a serious disciplinary offence” not permitted for students (University of Oxford, 2023b ).

Main message and best practice: honesty and mutual trust

In essence, students are not allowed to present AI-generated content as their own, Footnote 13 and they should have full responsibility and accountability for their own papers. Footnote 14 This is in line with the most ubiquitous principle enshrined in almost all university guidelines, irrespective of AI, that students are expected to complete their tasks based on their own knowledge and skills obtained throughout their education.

Given that the main challenge here is unauthorised use and overreliance on GAI platforms, the best practice answer is for students to adhere to academic honesty and integrity, scientific referencing standards, existing anti-plagiarism rules, and complete university assignments without fully relying on GAI tools, using, first and foremost, their own skills. The only exception is when instructed otherwise by their professors. By extension, preventing overuse and unauthorised use of AI assists students in avoiding undermining their own academic capacity-building efforts.

Human agency and oversight

AI systems have the potential to manipulate and influence human behaviour in ways that are not easily detectable. AI systems must, therefore, follow human-centric design principles and leave meaningful opportunities for human choice and intervention. Such systems should not be able to unjustifiably subordinate, coerce, deceive, manipulate, condition or herd humans (EUHLEX, 2019 , p. 16).

Human oversight thus refers to the capability for human intervention in every decision cycle of the AI system and the ability of users to make informed, autonomous decisions regarding AI systems. This encompasses the ability to choose not to use an AI system in a particular situation or to halt AI-related operations via a “stop” button or a comparable procedure in case the user detects anomalies, dysfunctions and unexpected performance from AI tools (European Commission, 2021 , Art. 14).

The sheer capability of active oversight and intervention vis-á-vis GAI systems is strongly linked to ethical responsibility and legal accountability. As Liao puts it, “the sufficient condition for human beings being rightsholders is that they have a physical basis for moral agency.” (Liao, 2020 , pp. 496–497). Wagner complemented this with the essential point that entity status for non-human actors would help to shield other parties from liability, i.e., primarily manufacturers and users (Wagner, 2018 ). This, in turn, would result in risk externalisation, which serves to minimise or relativise a person’s moral accountability and legal liability associated with wrongful or unethical acts.

Users, in our case, are primarily students who, at times, might be tempted to make use of AI tools in an unethical way, hoping to fulfil their university tasks faster and more efficiently than they could without these.

Human agency and oversight in university first responses

The crucial aspect of this ethical issue is the presence of a “stop” button or a similar regulatory procedure to streamline the operation of GAI tools. Existing university guidelines in this question point clearly in the direction of soft sanctions, if any, given the fact that there is a lack of evidence that AI detection platforms are effective and reliable tools to tell apart human work from AI-generated ones. Additionally, these tools raise some significant implications for privacy and data security issues, which is why university guidelines are particularly cautious when referring to these. Accordingly, the National Taiwan University, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, the University of Miami, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Yale, among others, do not recommend the use of AI detection platforms in university assessments. The University of Zürich further added the moral perspective in a guidance note from 13 July 2023, that “forbidding the use of undetectable tools on unsupervised assignments or demanding some sort of honour code likely ends up punishing the honest students” (University of Zürich, 2023 ). Apart from unreliability, the University of Cape Town also drew attention in its guide for staff that AI detection tools may “disproportionately flag text written by non-first language speakers as AI-generated” (University of Cape Town, 2023 , p. 8).

Macquarie University took a slightly more ambiguous stance when they informed their staff that, while it is not “proof” for anything, an AI writing detection feature was launched within Turnitin as of 5 April 2023 (Hillier, 2023 ), claiming that the software has a 97% detection rate with a 1% false positive rate in the tests that they had conducted (Turnitin, 2023 ). Apart from these, Boston University is among the few examples that recommend employing AI detection tools, but only in a restricted manner to ”evaluate the degree to which AI tools have likely been employed” and not as a source for any punitive measures against students (University of Boston, 2023 ). Remarkably, they complement the above with suggestions for a merit-based scoring system, whereby instructors shall treat work by students who declare no use of AI tools as the baseline for grading. A lower baseline is suggested for students who declare the use of AI tools (depending on how extensive the usage was), and for the bottom of this spectrum, the university suggests imposing a significant penalty for low-energy or unreflective reuse of material generated by AI tools and assigning zero points for merely reproducing the output from AI platforms.

A discrepant approach was adopted at the University of Toronto. Here, if an instructor indicates that the use of AI tools is not permitted on an assessment, and a student is later found to have used such a tool nevertheless, then the instructor should consider meeting with the student as the first step of a dialogue-based process under the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters (the same Code, which categorises the use of ChatGPT and other such tools as “unauthorised aid” or as “any other form of cheating” in case, an instructor specified that no outside assistance was permitted on an assignment) (University of Toronto, 2019 ).

More specifically, Imperial College London’s Guidance on the Use of Generative AI tools envisages the possibility of inviting a random selection of students to a so-called “authenticity interview” on their submitted assignments (Imperial College London, 2023b ). This entails requiring students to attend an oral examination of their submitted work to ensure its authenticity, which includes questions about the subject or how they approached their assignment.

As a rare exception, the University of Helsinki represents one of the more rigorous examples. The “Guidelines for the Use of AI in Teaching at the University of Helsinki” does not lay down any specific procedures for AI-related ethical offences. On the contrary, as para. 7 stipulates the unauthorised use of GAI in any course examination “constitutes cheating and will be treated in the same way as other cases of cheating” (University of Helsinki, 2023 ). Footnote 15

Those teachers who are reluctant to make AI tools a big part of their courses should rather aim to develop course assessment methods that can plausibly prevent the use of AI tools instead of attempting to filter these afterwards. Footnote 16 For example, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin instructs that, if possible, oral or practical examinations or written examinations performed on-site are recommended as alternatives to “classical” written home assignments (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2023a ).

Monash University also mentions some examples in this regard (Monash University, 2023a ), such as: asking students to create oral presentations, videos, and multimedia resources; asking them to incorporate more personal reflections tied to the concepts studied; implementing programmatic assessment that focuses on assessing broader attributes of students, using multiple methods rather than focusing on assessing individual kinds of knowledge or skills using a single assessment method (e.g., writing an essay).

Similarly, the University of Toronto suggest instructors to: ask students to respond to a specific reading that is very new and thus has a limited online footprint; assign group work to be completed in class, with each member contributing; or ask students to create a first draft of an assignment by hand, which could be complemented by a call to explain or justify certain elements of their work (University of Toronto, 2023 ).

Main message and best practice: Avoiding overreaction

In summary, the best practice that can be identified under this ethical dilemma is to secure human oversight through a blend of preventive measures (e.g. a shift in assessment methods) and soft sanctions. Given that AI detectors are unreliable and can cause a series of data privacy issues, the sanctioning of unauthorised AI use should happen on a “soft basis”, as part of a dialogue with the student concerned. Additionally, universities need to be aware and pay due attention to potentially unwanted rebound effects of bona fide measures, such as the merit-based scoring system of the University of Boston. In that case, using different scoring baselines based on the self-declared use of AI could, in practice, generate incentives for not declaring any use of AI at all, thereby producing counter-effective results.

While explainability refers to providing intelligible insight into the functioning of AI tools with a special focus on the interplay between the user’s input and the received output, transparency alludes to the requirement of providing unambiguous communication in the framework of system use.

As the European Commission’s Regulation proposal ( 2021 ) puts it under subchapter 5.2.4., transparency obligations should apply for systems that „(i) interact with humans, (ii) are used to detect emotions or determine association with (social) categories based on biometric data, or (iii) generate or manipulate content (‘deep fakes’). When persons interact with an AI system or their emotions or characteristics are recognised through automated means, people must be informed of that circumstance. If an AI system is used to generate or manipulate image, audio or video content that appreciably resembles authentic content, there should be an obligation to disclose that the content is generated through automated means, subject to exceptions for legitimate purposes (law enforcement, freedom of expression). This allows persons to make informed choices or step back from a given situation.”

People (in our case, university students and teachers) should, therefore, be fully informed when a decision is influenced by or relies on AI algorithms. In such instances, individuals should be able to ask for further explanation from the decision-maker using AI (e.g., a university body). Furthermore, individuals should be afforded the choice to present their case to a dedicated representative of the organisation in question who should have the power to reviset the decision and make corrections if necessary (UNESCO, 2022 , p. 22). Therefore, in the context of courses and other related education events, teachers should be clear about their utilisation of AI during the preparation of the material. Furthermore, instructors must unambiguously clarify ethical AI use in the classroom. Clear communication is essential about whether students have permission to utilise AI tools during assignments and how to report actual use.

As both UN and EU sources point out, raising awareness about and promoting basic AI literacy should be fostered as a means to empower people and reduce the digital divides and digital access inequalities resulting from the broad adoption of AI systems (EUHLEX, 2019 , p. 23; UNESCO, 2022 , p. 34).

Transparency and explainability in university first responses

The implementation of this principle seems to revolve around the challenge of decentralisation of university work, including the respect for teachers’ autonomy.

Teachers’ autonomy entails that teachers can decide if and to what extent they will allow their students to use AI platforms as part of their respective courses. This, however, comes with the essential corollary, that they must clearly communicate their decision to both students and university management in the course syllabus. To support transparency in this respect, many universities decided to establish 3-level- or 4-level admissibility frameworks (and even those who did not establish such multi-level systems, e.g., the University of Toronto, urge instructors to explicitly indicate in the course syllabus the expected use of AI) (University of Toronto, 2023 ).

The University of Auckland is among the universities that apply a fully laissez passer laissez-faire approach in this respect, meaning that there is a lack of centralised guidance or recommendations on this subject. They rather confer all practical decision-making of GAI use on course directors, adding that it is ultimately the student’s responsibility to correctly acknowledge the use of Gen-AI software (University of Auckland, 2023 ). Similarly, the University of Helsinki gives as much manoeuvring space to their staff as to allow them to change the course of action during the semester. As para 1 of their earlier quoted Guidelines stipulates, teachers are responsible for deciding how GAI can be used on a given course and are free to fully prohibit their use if they think it impedes the achievement of the learning objectives.

Colorado State University, for example, provides its teachers with 3 types of syllabus statement options (Colorado State University, 2023 ): (a) the prohibitive statement: whereby any work created, or inspired by AI agents is considered plagiarism and will not be tolerated; (b) the use-with-permission statement: whereby generative AI can be used but only as an exception and in line with the teachers further instruction, and (c) the abdication statement: where the teacher acknowledges that the course grade will also be a reflection of the students ability to harness AI technologies as part of their preparation for their future in a workforce that will increasingly require AI-literacy.

Macquarie University applies a similar system and provides it’s professors with an Assessment Checklist in which AI use can be either “Not permitted” or “Some use permitted” (meaning that the scope of use is limited while the majority of the work should be written or made by the student.), or “Full use permitted (with attribution)”, alluding to the adaptive use of AI tools, where the generated content is edited, mixed, adapted and integrated into the student’s final submission – with attribution of the source (Macquarie University, 2023 ).

The same approach is used at Monash University where generative AI tools can be: (a) used for all assessments in a specific unit; (b) cannot be used for any assessments; (c) some AI tools may be used selectively (Monash University, 2023b ).

The University of Cape Town (UCT) applies a 3-tier system not just in terms of the overall approach to the use or banning of GAI, but also with regard to specific assessment approaches recommended to teachers. As far as the former is concerned, they differentiate between the strategies of: (a) Avoiding (reverting to in-person assessment, where the use of AI isn’t possible); (b) Outrunning (devising an assessment that AI cannot produce); and (c) Embracing (discussing the appropriate use of AI with students and its ethical use to create the circumstances for authentic assessment outputs). The assessment possibilities, in turn, are categorised into easy, medium, and hard levels. Easy tasks include, e.g., generic short written assignments. Medium level might include examples such as personalised or context-based assessments (e.g. asking students to write to a particular audience whose knowledge and values must be considered or asking questions that would require them to give a response that draws from concepts that were learnt in class, in a lab, field trip…etc). In contrast, hard assessments include projects involving real-world applications, synchronous oral assessments, or panel assessments (University of Cape Town, 2023 ).

4-tier-systems are analogues. The only difference is that they break down the “middle ground”. Accordingly, the Chinese University of Hong Kong clarifies that Approach 1 (by default) means the prohibition of all use of AI tools; Approach 2 entails using AI tools only with prior permission; Approach 3 means using AI tools only with explicit acknowledgement; and Approach 4 is reserved for courses in which the use of AI tools is freely permitted with no acknowledgement needed (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2023 ).

Similarly, the University of Delaware provides course syllabus statement examples for teachers including: (1) Prohibiting all use of AI tools; (2) Allowing their use only with prior permission; (3) Allow their use only with explicit acknowledgement; (4) Freely allow their use (University of Delaware, 2023 ).

The Technical University of Berlin also proposes a 4-tier system but uses a very different logic based on the practical knowledge one can obtain by using GAI. Accordingly, they divide AI tools as used to: (a) acquire professional competence; (b) learn to write scientifically; (c) be able to assess AI tools and compare them with scientific methods; d) professional use of AI tools in scientific work. Their corresponding guideline even quotes Art. 5 of the German Constitution referencing the freedom of teaching ( Freiheit der Lehre ), entailing that teachers should have the ability to decide for themselves which teaching aids they allow or prohibit. Footnote 17

This detailed approach, however, is rather the exception. According to the compilation on 6 May 2023 by Solis ( 2023 ), among the 100 largest German universities, 2% applied a general prohibition on the use of ChatGPT, 23% granted partial permission, 12% generally permitted its use, while 63% of the universities had none or only vague guidelines in this respect.

Main message and best practice: raising awareness

Overall, the best practice answer to the dilemma of transparency is the internal decentralisation of university work and the application of a “bottom-up” approach that respects the autonomy of university professors. Notwithstanding the potential existence of regulatory frameworks that set out binding rules for all citizens of an HE institution, this means providing university instructors with proper manoeuvring space to decide on their own how they would like to make AI use permissible in their courses, insofar as they communicate their decision openly.

Inclusiveness and diversity

Para. 34 of the Report by the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education ( 2021 ) highlights that inclusive education can only be reached with the proactive presence of teachers and stresses that “AI technologies cannot be used to the detriment or at the expense of in-person education, as teachers must not be replaced by any AI or AI-related technologies”. Additionally, para. 20 of the same document highlights the need to create diverse teams of developers and engineers to work alongside the main actors in the educational, cultural, and audiovisual sectors in order to prevent gender or social bias from being inadvertently included in AI algorithms, systems, and applications.

This approach also underlines the need to consider the variety of different theories through which AI has been developed as a precursor to ensuring the application of the principle of diversity (UNESCO, 2022 , pp. 33–35), and it also recognises that a nuanced answer to AI-related challenges is only possible if affected stakeholders have an equal say in regulatory and design processes. An idea closely linked to the principle of fairness and the pledge to leave no one behind who might be affected by the outcome of using AI systems (EUHLEX, 2019 , pp. 18–19).

Therefore, in the context of higher education, the principle of inclusiveness aims to ensure that an institution provides the same opportunities to access the benefits of AI technologies for all its students, irrespective of their background, while also considering the particular needs of various vulnerable groups potentially marginalised based on age, gender, culture, religion, language, or disabilities. Footnote 18 Inclusiveness also alludes to stakeholder participation in internal university dialogues on the use and impact of AI systems (including students, teachers, administration and leadership) as well as in the constant evaluation of how these systems evolve. On a broader scale, it implies communication with policymakers on how higher education should accommodate itself to this rapidly changing environment (EUHLEX, 2019 , p. 23; UNESCO, 2022 , p. 35).

Inclusiveness and diversity in university first responses

Universities appear to be aware of the potential disadvantages for students who are either unfamiliar with GAI or who choose not to use it or use it in an unethical manner. As a result, many universities thought that the best way to foster inclusive GAI use was to offer specific examples of how teachers could constructively incorporate these tools into their courses.

The University of Waterloo, for example, recommends various methods that instructors can apply on sight, with the same set of tools for all students during their courses, which in itself mitigates the effects of any discrepancies in varying student backgrounds (University of Waterloo, 2023 ): (a) Give students a prompt during class, and the resulting text and ask them to critique and improve it using track changes; (b) Create two distinct texts and have students explain the flaws of each or combine them in some way using track changes; (c) Test code and documentation accuracy with a peer; or (d) Use ChatGPT to provide a preliminary summary of an issue as a jumping-off point for further research and discussion.

The University of Pittsburgh ( 2023 ) and Monash added similar recommendations to their AI guidelines (Monash University, 2023c ).

The University of Cambridge mentions under its AI-deas initiative a series of projects aimed to develop new AI methods to understand and address sensory, neural or linguistic challenges such as hearing loss, brain injury or language barriers to support people who find communicating a daily challenge in order to improve equity and inclusion. As they put it, “with AI we can assess and diagnose common language and communication conditions at scale, and develop technologies such as intelligent hearing aids, real-time machine translation, or other language aids to support affected individuals at home, work or school.” (University of Cambridge, 2023 ).

The homepage of the Technical University of Berlin (Technische Universität Berlin) displays ample and diverse materials, including videos Footnote 19 and other documents, as a source of inspiration for teachers on how to provide an equitable share of AI knowledge for their students (Glathe et al. 2023 ). More progressively, the university’s Institute of Psychology offers a learning modul called “Inclusive Digitalisation”, available for students enrolled in various degree programmes to understand inclusion and exclusion mechanisms in digitalisation. This modul touches upon topics such as barrier-free software design, mechanisms and reasons for digitalised discrimination or biases in corporate practices (their homepage specifically alludes to the fact that input and output devices, such as VR glasses, have exclusively undergone testing with male test subjects and that the development of digital products and services is predominantly carried out by men. The practical ramifications of such a bias result in input and output devices that are less appropriate for women and children) (Technische Universität Berlin, 2023 ).

Columbia recommends the practice of “scaffolding”, which is the process of breaking down a larger assignment into subtasks (Columbia University, 2023 ). In their understanding, this method facilitates regular check-ins and enables students to receive timely feedback throughout the learning process. Simultaneously, the implementation of scaffolding helps instructors become more familiar with students and their work as the semester progresses, allowing them to take additional steps in the case of students who might need more attention due to their vulnerable backgrounds or disabilities to complete the same tasks.

The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in its Recommendations, clearly links the permission of GAI use with the requirement of equal accessibility. They remind that if examiners require students to use AI for an examination, “students must be provided with access to these technologies free of charge and in compliance with data protection regulations” (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2023b ).

Concurringly, the University of Cape Town also links inclusivity to accessibility. As they put it, “there is a risk that those with poorer access to connectivity, devices, data and literacies will get unequal access to the opportunities being provided by AI”, leading to the conclusion that the planning of the admissible use of GAI on campus should be cognizant of access inequalities (University of Cape Town, 2023 ). They also draw their staff’s attention to a UNESCO guide material containing useful methods to incorporate ChatGPT into the course, including methods such as the “Socratic opponent” (AI acts as an opponent to develop an argument), the “study buddy” (AI helps the student reflect on learning material) or the “dynamic assessor” (AI provides educators with a profile of each student’s current knowledge based on their interactions with ChatGPT) (UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2023 ).

Finally, the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Recommendations suggest using GAI tools, among others, for the purposes of community development. They suggest that such community-building activities, whether online or in live groups, kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, they assist individuals in keeping their knowledge up to date with a topic that is constantly evolving, while it offers people from various backgrounds the opportunity to become part of communities in the process where they can share their experiences and build new relations (National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2023 ).

Main message and best practice: Proactive central support and the pledge to leave no one behind

To conclude, AI-related inclusivity for students is best fostered if the university does not leave its professors solely to their own resources to come up with diverging initiatives. The best practice example for this dilemma thus lies in a proactive approach that results in the elaboration of concrete teaching materials (e.g., subscriptions to AI tools to ensure equal accessibility for all students, templates, video tutorials, open-access answers to FAQs…etc.), specific ideas, recommendations and to support specialised programmes and collaborations with an inclusion-generating edge. With centrally offered resources and tools institutions seem to be able to ensure accessability irrespective of students’ background and financial abilities.

Discussion of the First Responses

While artificial intelligence and even its generative form has been around for a while, the arrival of application-ready LLMs – most notably ChatGPT has changed the game when it comes to grammatically correct large-scale and content-specific text generation. This has invoked an immediate reaction from the higher education community as the question arose as to how it may affect various forms of student performance evaluation (such as essay and thesis writing) (Chaudhry et al. 2023 ; Yu, 2023 ; Farazouli et al. 2024 ).

Often the very first reaction (a few months after the announcement of the availability of ChatGPT) was a ban on these tools and a potential return to hand-written evaluation and oral exams. In the institutions investigated under this research, notable examples may be most Australian universities (such as Monash) or even Oxford. On the other hand, even leading institutions have immediately embraced this new tool as a great potential helper of lecturers – the top name here being Harvard. Very early responses thus ranged widely – and have changed fast over the first six-eight months “post-ChatGPT”.

Over time responses from the institutions investigated started to put out clear guidelines and even created dedicated policies or modified existing ones to ensure a framework of acceptable use. The inspiration leading these early regulatory efforts was influenced by the international ethics documents reviewed in this paper. Institutions were aware of and relied on those guidelines. The main goal of this research was to shed light on the questions of how much and in what ways they took them on board regarding first responses. Most first reactions were based on “traditional” AI ethics and understanding of AI before LLMs and the generative revolution. First responses by institutions were not based on scientific literature or arguments from journal publications. Instead, as our results demonstrated it was based on publicly available ethical norms and guidelines published by well-known international organizations and professional bodies.

Conclusions, limitations and future research

Ethical dilemmas discussed in this paper were based on the conceptualisation embedded in relevant documents of various international fora. Each ethical dimension, while multifaceted in itself, forms a complex set of challenges that are inextricably intertwined with one another. Browsing university materials, the overall impression is that Universities primarily aim to explore and harness the potential benefits of generative AI but not with an uncritical mindset. They are focusing on the opportunities while simultaneously trying to address the emerging challenges in the field.

Accordingly, the main ethical imperative is that students must complete university assignments based on the knowledge and skills they acquired during their university education unless their instructors determine otherwise. Moral and legal responsibility in this regard always rests with human individuals. AI agents possess neither the legal standing nor the physical basis for moral agency, which makes them incapable of assuming such responsibilities. This “top-down” requirement is most often complemented by the “bottom-up” approach of providing instructors with proper maneuvering space to decide how they would like to make AI use permissible in their courses.

Good practice in human oversight could thus be achieved through a combination of preventive measures and soft, dialogue-based procedures. This latter category includes the simple act of teachers providing clear, written communications in their syllabi and engaging in a dialogue with their students to provide unambiguous and transparent instructions on the use of generative AI tools within their courses. Additionally, to prevent the unauthorised use of AI tools, changing course assessment methods by default is more effective than engaging in post-assessment review due to the unreliability of AI detection tools.

Among the many ethical dilemmas that generative AI tools pose to social systems, this paper focused on those pertaining to the pedagogical aspects of higher education. Due to this limitation, related fields, such as university research, were excluded from the scope of the analysis. However, research-related activities are certainly ripe for scientific scrutiny along the lines indicated in this study. Furthermore, only a limited set of institutions could be investigated, those who were the ”first respondents” to the set of issues covered by this study. Hereby, this paper hopes to inspire further research on the impact of AI tools on higher education. Such research could cover more institutions, but it would also be interesting to revisit the same institutions again to see how their stance and approach might have changed over time considering how fast this technology evolves and how much we learn about its capabilities and shortcomings.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study. All documents referenced in this study are publicly available on the corresponding websites provided in the Bibliography or in the footnotes. No code has been developed as part of this research.

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While the original French version was published in 1954, the first English translation is dated 1964.

As the evaluation by Bang et al. ( 2023 ) found, ChatGPT is only 63.41% accurate on average in ten different reasoning categories under logical reasoning, non-textual reasoning, and common-sense reasoning, making it an unreliable reasoner.

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The editors-in-chief of Nature and Science stated that ChatGPT does not meet the standard for authorship: „ An attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs…. We would not allow AI to be listed as an author on a paper we published, and use of AI-generated text without proper citation could be considered plagiarism,” (Stokel-Walker, 2023 ). See also (Nature, 2023 ).

While there was an initial mistake that credited ChatGPT as an author of an academic paper, Elsevier issued a Corrigendum on the subject in February 2023 (O’Connor, 2023 ). Elsevier then clarified in its “Use of AI and AI-assisted technologies in writing for Elsevier” announcement, issued in March 2023, that “Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author”. See https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/the-use-of-generative-ai-and-ai-assisted-technologies-in-writing-for-elsevier . Accessed 23 Nov 2023.

The ethical guidelines of Wiley was updated on 28 February 2023 to clarify the publishing house’s stance on AI-generated content.

See e.g.: Section 2.4 of Princeton University’s Academic Regulations (Princeton University, 2023 ); the Code of Practice and Procedure regarding Misconduct in Research of the University of Oxford (University of Oxford, 2023a ); Section 2.1.1 of the Senate Guidelines on Academic Honesty of York University, enumerating cases of cheating (York University, 2011 ); Imperial College London’s Academic Misconduct Policy and Procedures document (Imperial College London, 2023a ); the Guidelines for seminar and term papers of the University of Vienna (Universität Wien, 2016 ); Para 4. § (1) - (4) of the Anti-plagiarism Regulation of the Corvinus University of Budapest (Corvinus University of Budapest, 2018 ), to name a few.

15 Art. 2 (c)(v) of the early Terms of Use of OpenAI Products (including ChatGPT) dated 14 March 2023 clarified the restrictions of the use of their products. Accordingly, users may not represent the output from their services as human-generated when it was not ( https://openai.com/policies/mar-2023-terms/ . Accessed 14 Nov 2023). Higher education institutions tend to follow suit with this policy. For example, the List of Student Responsibilities enumerated under the “Policies and Regulations” of the Harvard Summer School from 2023 reminds students that their “academic integrity policy forbids students to represent work as their own that they did not write, code, or create” (Harvard University, 2023 ).

A similar view was communicated by Taylor & Francis in a press release issued on 17 February 2023, in which they clarified that: “Authors are accountable for the originality, validity and integrity of the content of their submissions. In choosing to use AI tools, authors are expected to do so responsibly and in accordance with our editorial policies on authorship and principles of publishing ethics” (Taylor and Francis, 2023 ).

This is one of the rare examples where the guideline was adopted by the university’s senior management, in this case, the Academic Affairs Council.

It should be noted that abundant sources recommend harnessing AI tools’ opportunities to improve education instead of attempting to ban them. Heaven, among others, advocated on the pages of the MIT Technology Review the use of advanced chatbots such as ChatGPT as these could be used as “powerful classroom aids that make lessons more interactive, teach students media literacy, generate personalised lesson plans, save teachers time on admin” (Heaven, 2023 ).

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Attila Dabis & Csaba Csáki

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AD had established the initial idea and contributed to the collection of ethical standards as well as to the collection of university policy documents. Also contributed to writing the initial draft and the final version. CsCs had reviewed and clarified the initial concept and then developed the first structure including methodological considerations. Also contributed to the collection of university policy documents as well as to writing the second draft and the final version.

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Dabis, A., Csáki, C. AI and ethics: Investigating the first policy responses of higher education institutions to the challenge of generative AI. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1006 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03526-z

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03526-z

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