Artificial intelligence has revamped our conversations about what writing is and how it functions in higher education. As WAC, we understand writing as a multifaceted process that can be used for learning, communicating, and engaging with the world around us. AI helps and hinders us in completing these tasks, so as instructors, it is up to us to support students in understanding these nuances and how to engage usefully and ethically. We suggest the following guidelines for thinking about AI and Writing.
How Can AI Support Student Writing?
AI can support student writing in a number of ways, including breaking down complex tasks into steps, providing feedback, editing, acting as a writing tutor, supporting slide design, and much more. The following are ways instructors can incorporate AI into their classrooms and each includes resources to consider.
Prompt engineering is thinking strategically about what input to enter into an AI site to get a specific output. AI works best when writers specify the writing context and request particular data and information. Instructors can support students to develop prompt engineering skills through modeling and practice. First, provide models of effective prompts that illustrate how to specify writing context. Then, have students produce their own prompts and test them across AI platforms to evaluate responses and ultimately understand the specific AI output students were expecting.
Resources to Explore:
- Example Doc: Prompts for Students
- Video: Prompting AI
It may seem simple. But assignments where students compare and contrast writing by AI and writing by a human require analysis. Students identify similarities and differences while becoming critical of the possibilities and limitations of AI. Asking students to summarize a course reading and then having students ask AI to do the same invites students to recognize and examine bias in both: what is emphasized, what is ignored, and how similar is the AI response across all students in the class? Having an opportunity to play with AI can help lead to productive conversations in the classroom. Most importantly, comparing and contrasting reminds us that what humans bring to the conversation is essential.
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AI can support students by helping them to understand a writing prompt and providing detailed feedback on drafts. But students need guidance on how to engage with AI for these purposes. We recommend providing students with specific feedback-seeking prompts to use with AI, such as “Act like a Writing Center tutor. Look over this assignment prompt and draft. Identify 1) how well I am answering the prompt, 2) 1 or 2 suggestions for major revisions, and 3) 1 or 2 suggestions for minor revisions. Do not rewrite anything for me. Ask me follow-up questions as needed, like a tutor.” You can adapt this prompt for many different purposes and contexts to emphasize what is important to you and your class.
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AI can also help students with process activities by being a sounding board for their ideas, generating outlines, reframing key concepts into various metaphors, analogies, images, diagrams, and beyond. It can be especially helpful for neurodivergent students to provide process suggestions. Having students use AI in a wide variety of ways can help them understand strategies to use it beyond your classes to support their writing.
Resources to Explore
How Can AI Hinder Student Writing?
While AI can produce a lot of products and outputs, it has a range of limitations, such as perpetualiting biases and inaccurate information, generating fake information (hallucinating), and having enormous environmental impacts. At the same time, overreliance on AI inhibits students’ critical thinking, creativity, and well-being. Lastly, in education, AI disproportionality impacts some populations more than others, specifically our multilingual students. The following are ways you can navigate AI’s hindrance of student learning and resources to consider.
AI Critical Literacy, the ability to evaluate, critique, and responsibly use AI, is an essential skill for all AI users to learn. It requires the user to test, critically examine, and check AI’s work, but also question the usefulness of it as a tool and in society. One example for students is to have them ask an AI tool for citations and then check if they are real sources or not. This can be especially helpful in specific disciplines where students have a lot of content knowledge and can easily identify mistakes.
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AI uses a substantial amount of energy and water resources to store and produce data. Frequently, these data centers disproportionately affect certain communities more than others. Understanding the environmental impact and talking about it with students can provide clarity about when AI use is unnecessary compared to the larger environmental cost.
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Overreliance on AI can weaken student creativity and critical thinking gradually by offloading cognitive thinking skills important to the process of learning. This is especially true when students have assignments where they can easily copy/paste or assignments that do not require them to engage in process work or feedback from another person. Creating opportunities for student dialogue and reinforcing for students that instructors want to know what they are thinking is an important way to lessen the impulse to rely on AI.
Resource to Explore:
Time Article "ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills"
AI is largely trained on publications, work, and data sets that emphasize “Standard Academic American English” and reinforce narrow beliefs about effective writing that stigmatizes language practices of certain communities, including the diverse languages of students at U of A. For multilingual students in particular, instructors frequently request that they “correct” their writing by putting it into AI, which leads to a sanitation of language and an erosion of student’s voice and linguistic agency. As instructors, it is important to focus on supporting students in resisting AI language systems by valuing the diversity of expression, critically examining Standard Academic American English, and working with students on how to navigate this critically in the classroom.
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What Can Instructors Do?
The following are ways instructors can support students in developing AI critical literacy and navigating the classroom conversation:
- Explore and learn about AI tools. Our Library guide provides a large amount of useful resources for instructors to get started.
- Set clear guidelines about the use of AI and explain why. Learn more about drafting syllabus statements to set up expectations.
- Encourage open dialogue regarding AI, coursework, and academic integrity. Return to the conversation throughout all assignments.
- Model appropriate citation and acknowledgement if you use AI in your teaching materials. Here is a useful resource on citing AI usage.
- Learn how other instructors are using AI across the disciplines. Here are examples of AI usage from real instructors.
