Is There a Place for Writing AI in the Classroom?
Writing and rhetoric faculty offer best practices for using the controversial tool.
These tools can generate writing for nearly any purpose and tailor the form, genre and tone depending on the user’s instructions. AI also offers idea invention and helps writers struggling to get words on the page.
However, numerous pitfalls exist. For example, students might mistake using AI generators for the act of writing itself; AI may accelerate language injustices that already run rampant in academe, such as the erasure of linguistic diversity and the narrowing of citational spheres; and the tool remains problematic for faculty and students concerned with equity and inclusion (more on that below).
The Jefferson community shared recommendations and worries on AI writing tools at Faculty Days earlier this year. Faculty also participated in a task force to make recommendations to the University about AI writing tools in the classroom.
Dr. Katie Gindlesparger is associate professor of writing and rhetoric and director of the university writing program. (Photos by ©Thomas Jefferson University Photography Services)
The task force recommended faculty members determine the appropriate use of AI for their own classrooms as it’s tied to disciplinary standards, including external benchmarks like professional and licensing organizations. This means nursing faculty, for instance, may have different professional and pedagogical standards for AI than design faculty. While each faculty member will decide to what extent AI will be a teaching tool in the classroom, the task force recommends all faculty, regardless of discipline, address its use.
Given the range of practices students might encounter, Jefferson’s writing and rhetoric faculty wanted to distill best practices across disciplines for faculty and students. We hope these recommendations help as you prepare for the fall semester.
FOR FACULTY
Double Down on the Basics
To get the most out of writing in any classroom setting (read: to yield the best student writing), instructors should help students practice disciplinary forms of writing and critical inquiry of sources and citation practices, as well as respond to feedback to revise.
For a brief intro to best practices in teaching writing, review the National Council of Teachers of English statement on Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing and writing scholar Ed White’s foundational Heuristic for the Writer of Writing Assignments. Ask yourself: What will students learn by writing this assignment?
AI writing tools don’t understand what’s authentic, the motivation behind a particular prompt or the cultural context in which its words will be used.
Highlight Original Thinking
Understandably, when encountering AI writing software, developing writers may feel discouraged: Why learn to write if a machine can write my essays for me? Therefore, use ChatGPT to educate students on their unique strengths as human writers.
Help them think through, “What can I do that AI writing tools cannot?” For example, ChatGPT never has had a sensory experience with anything. If asked to write about a tree, ChatGPT will describe a tree based on input information and the material—previous writing—on which it learned. It cannot sense a particular tree. ChatGPT can help us navigate the existing knowledge about the world, but it cannot itself realize anything new.
On a more positive note, ChatGPT can be a great invitation to imagination and play. ChatGPT can rewrite a passage into another author’s voice or generate original scenes from “The Office” on class content, which can help students to reengage or encounter material from a different angle. Such playful attitudes facilitate original, divergent thinking, yet another of our human strengths.
Encourage Linguistic Diversity
Because AI generates standard written English, the writing produced can create the impression this English is the only, or best, kind of written English. AI writing generators reflect only the text they know, which means they mirror what’s most conventional or easily found online.
AI writing tools also don’t understand what’s authentic, the motivation behind a particular prompt or the cultural context in which its words will be used. This includes understanding how the writing style itself might be inappropriate, offensive or irrelevant.
Dr. Valerie Hanson is associate professor of writing and rhetoric and associate dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences.
The erasure of linguistic diversity in classroom settings has dire consequences for the relevance and efficacy of academic preparation across disciplines (for example, consider the role of hospitable language practices in public health, medical education, manufacturing instructions or real estate sales). And decades of scholarship on language diversity show professional and academic contexts only gain credibility when they include, gesture to and explicitly invite other Englishes.
To counteract the assumption that AI’s default style is natural or normal, invite students to write in Englishes relevant to them. Ask students about their home languages, how they want to sound on the page and what help they need to get there.
Include AI in the Syllabus
Students will look to faculty for guidance with AI. Make expectations for how students should create and submit writing assignments clear on the syllabus and discuss them each time you approach an assignment.
While you may ask students to use AI writing tools differently per assignment, they will likely benefit from a few ground rules relevant to all of them. Ask students to cite the AI generator if it has played a significant role in creating text and offer acceptable and unacceptable uses. This crowdsourced, multidisciplinary and multi-institution AI policy index can be helpful.
FOR STUDENTS
Talk Back to AI
AI writing tools present a threat to a writer’s credibility. These tools are deeply flawed in their accuracy, provide a shallow pool of references and offer simplistic, overgeneralized explanations to complex questions. Deep research, nuance and specificity are the keys to good academic writing.
Because AI often is wrong or reductive, you can “talk back” to the AI response to see what’s missing and find the edge of the tool’s capacity on a particular topic. Ask, “Why didn’t you consider any sources with a global perspective?” Or, “Can you disagree using examples from the [name a local event]?” And, “Why can’t you find any more evidence about [name of local problem]?” You can then fill in the gaps with further research.
If asked to write about a tree, ChatGPT will describe a tree based on input information and the material—previous writing—on which it learned. It cannot sense a particular tree.
Embrace Personality
Writing can be a powerful practice for developing an inner life as it can mobilize personal expression, self-understanding and agency. ChatGPT can’t replace this kind of writing and cannot articulate your own story, self or life.
While faculty will have differing expectations about the use of personal evidence and pronouns like “I” in written assignments, there’s no erasing an author’s subjectivity. If you’re struggling with an assignment, consider writing the “guts” of it in a letter to a friend or an email window. Then, give ChatGPT the same assignment. What are the differences between the two drafts? Can you combine and revise them to make a richer draft than you would have initially started with?
Writing your ideas to yourself or a close friend and combining them with the automation and convention of AI may get you closer to the product the professor expects—without losing your voice, expressiveness or sense of inwardness. Remember to check the AI’s facts (see above) and cite the generator’s contributions to your work. Most citation styles offer a template for AI.
Writing can be a powerful practice for developing an inner life as it can mobilize personal expression, self-understanding and agency. ChatGPT can’t replace this kind of writing.
Experiment With the Tools
Finally, we encourage students and faculty to sign on to any of the AI writing tools and get comfortable with the writing they create. To produce satisfactory writing, you may need to spend some time directing the tool to do specific writing tasks: “Explain the example in paragraph three” and “Explain why you think the example in paragraph three supports the overall point that [repeat of thesis statement].”
These specific writing prompts are teaching tools themselves, and taken as a sequence of directions, your prompts become an outline of your writing process. You may not need Bard’s help, after all.
Faculty who would like support for the teaching of writing can schedule a consultation via the University’s Writing Across the Curriculum initiative. Students looking for support can contact the Student Writing Center on Center City Campus or the Academic Success Center on East Falls Campus.
Dr. Katie Gindlesparger is associate professor of writing and rhetoric and director of the university writing program; Daniel Cronin is visiting assistant teaching professor of writing and rhetoric; Dr. Abigail Orenstein Ash is assistant teaching professor of writing and rhetoric; and Dr. Valerie Hanson is associate professor of writing and rhetoric and associate dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences.