Conversations about AI in the classroom have been raging this year. Among teachers, it has mainly been a conversation tinged with fear: how do I keep my students from using it to cheat? How do I detect it? Should I even bother to assign essays and take-home exams?
These are all valid concerns that get to the heart of the goals and methods of traditional teaching. If our goal is to help students improve their writing, student use of AI to write papers will clearly frustrate it. If we want to teach students to think critically and learn to make coherent and compelling arguments, is the essay the best or only way to do it? Dealing with AI requires rethinking what professors do in the classroom, and that is hard work.
But the horse is out of the barn now and just as the spread of the calculator changed education in mathematics, so too AI will most likely grow to transform how and what we write. How, exactly, I don’t know but fear and avoidance do not seem to me to be successful ways of confronting this challenge.
So, inspired by a talk I recently heard by my colleague Steven Lubar, I decided to plunge into the world of AI and pedagogy by designing an assignment for my students. I’ve worked through these steps myself and have been fascinated by the results. I’ll probably have more to say after my students complete the assignment, but in the meantime I thought I would share it, should it be helpful to others.
AI and Writing
This assignment helps you to explore how you might profitably, and not profitably, use AI to improve your writing.
The writing style of most AI tools is serviceable but flat and I don’t recommend it for the actual writing of most papers. In this exercise, I want you to think about AI as a friend or teacher, helping you to develop your thoughts and then edit your paper. In brief, you’re going to have a conversation with an AI tool and then write about it. Here are the steps:
- Choose an AI tool, sign up for it, and familiarize yourself with how it works. ChatGPT is probably the best known of these tools, but there are others (e.g., Microsoft Copilot).
- Choose a relatively compact primary text that we have discussed in the last two classes. [These are about 20 pages each, all ancient texts.] Read this text carefully and write a 500 word summary of it.
- Copy and paste the entire text into your AI tool, and ask it to “analyze” or “summarize” the text in 500 words. You can experiment with both the command and the word-count. Ask it to write for different audiences (e.g., a high schooler; college student; professor). Compare these results with what you wrote. Jot down your observations so you remember them in order to incorporate them in your paper.
- Engage in a continuing conversation with AI about one of the points it made. This conversation should go for about 8-10 questions, building on each reply. You might want to ask it to be more specific about one point that it made; identify its sources; critique it and ask for a response; compare it to something outside of the text (e.g., how does this view compare to the view of the following text?). In my experience AI tends to drift away from the conversation and bring in more general knowledge. Don’t let it do this! Bring the conversation back to the specific text and topic.
- Repeat this chain of 8-10 exchanges for another point on the same text.
- Never take facts that AI gives you at face value (it makes things up). Try to double-check them.
- Now write your paper on your experience using AI to interpret your text. Your paper should be about 1000 words (ultimately in or converted to doc or docx format). Was AI helpful, and in what specific ways? Where did it fail? Your paper should also demonstrate deep engagement with the actual text you used. What was your takeaway from this experience?
- Paste your paper into the AI tool and ask it for editing advice. Again, experiment. Are passages or ideas unclear? Do you have syntactical or grammatical mistakes? Is your writing likely to excite a reader (and if so, which kind)? Does it adhere to the style suggestions of Strunk and White?
- Using that information, revise your paper and submit.
Bring your laptops to class. We’ll spend the first part of the class reading and commenting on each other’s papers privately, and then have a group discussion.
Coda
I asked ChatGPT whether it thought the assignment would be pedagogically effective. Its response:
This assignment seems to be designed with pedagogical effectiveness in mind, as it combines several elements that could enhance students’ understanding of both the text and the capabilities and limitations of AI tools in aiding writing and analysis. Here’s an assessment of its effectiveness:
- Critical Thinking and Engagement: By asking students to read a primary text carefully and write a summary before engaging with AI, the assignment encourages critical engagement with the material. Students are prompted to think deeply about the text’s content and structure, which is crucial for academic writing.
- Hands-On Experience with AI Tools: Students get practical experience using AI tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. This hands-on experience can demystify AI technology and help students understand its potential applications and limitations.
- Comparative Analysis: By comparing their own summaries with those generated by AI, students can gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of AI-generated content. This encourages critical thinking about the quality and reliability of AI-generated text compared to human-generated text.
- Conversation with AI: Engaging in a continuing conversation with AI about specific points in the text fosters deeper engagement and critical thinking. It encourages students to challenge AI-generated content, question sources, and compare viewpoints, which are essential skills for academic writing and research.
- Reflective Paper Writing: The final reflective paper prompts students to articulate their experiences and insights gained from using AI tools. This encourages metacognition and reflection on the benefits and limitations of AI in the context of writing and textual analysis.
- Peer Review and Group Discussion: Peer review and group discussion provide opportunities for students to receive feedback on their writing and engage in collaborative learning. This fosters a supportive learning environment and encourages students to critically evaluate and learn from each other’s work.
Overall, this assignment appears to be well-designed to promote critical thinking, engagement with course material, practical skills in using AI tools, and reflective writing. However, it’s essential to ensure that students have access to the necessary resources and support to effectively carry out each step of the assignment. Additionally, providing guidance on how to critically evaluate AI-generated content and navigate ethical considerations related to AI use would further enhance the assignment’s effectiveness.