Secondary Collaborators
Laurel Westrup, Continuing Lecturer
Tamar Christensen, Continuing Lecturer
Darien Battle, Continuing Lecturer
Liz Galvin Lew, Sr. Continuing Lecturer
Dana Cairns Watson, Continuing Lecturer
Initiative in generative AI and composition instruction
Writing Programs’ primary charge is to help students hone their academic writing and reading skills, so we are on the front lines as generative AI tools have sent ripples through the university’s instructional waters. They have challenged some of our tried-and-true classroom practices, placed us in a potentially adversarial relationship with students who may use generative AI uncritically in their writing, and have introduced tensions among our colleagues as we try to determine the best way to respond to generative AI in our classroom practices. In a May 2024 Inside Higher Ed commentary, John Warner captured our dilemma: “… the core problem people in education must grapple with hasn’t changed at all: How do we help students learn? In this case, I’m specifically focused on helping students learn to write. ChatGPT doesn’t alter the problem in the slightest. It may be part of the solution to this problem, but we are very very far from having sufficient evidence to make that determination. Jane Rosenzweig, Director of the Harvard Writing Center, frames it clearly with her question, ‘To what problem is ChatGPT the solution?’ When we look at the “problem” of learning to write—which is not the same thing as producing written artifacts—it becomes very difficult to see if ChatGPT has any utility, except at the margins. But of course, the technology is here….”
Up to now, our faculty have been in a reactive not proactive position when it comes to the impact of generative AI applications on the teaching of composition. To move from reactive to proactive, our faculty must understand more about generative AI and its role in student writing. The project we propose will help us understand the technology behind writing assistive gen-AI tools, delve into pedagogical research into AI competency in writing instruction, and as a result, help Writing Programs instructors make conscious decisions about how to approach gen-AI based on values, not based on fear of change or of ignorance of technology, allowing us to strengthen the necessary work our composition courses do of building students’ skills as readers and writers.