Dr. Kershen’s Thoughts on Becoming a Teacher of Writing in an AI World

Learning how to be a teacher of writing and teaching writing and grammar to others requires that the teacher (i.e., me and you) actually write. This means that the most effective teachers of writing are writers themselves, who engage in frequent and regular writing for a variety of purposes. These teachers recognize the iterative stages and processes of writing because they are busy writing and moving through those stages with their own work. Thus, I expect you to be an active writer – living a “writerly life,” which means writing intentionally whenever possible, to thoughtfully observe the world around you, to curiously follow your interests and questions, to investigate the ideas of others with critical engagement, to respond to texts of all kinds, and to support the academic freedom and intellectual inquiry of others through extending their ideas, questioning them, and seeking to find evidence and support for your own concepts and those of others. You must reflect on your own writing and your “writer identity” to become an effective teacher of writing. For example, many celebrated American writers define the teaching of writing as an active process that includes writing. https://www.brynmawr.edu/bulletin/her-own-words-toni-morrison-writing-editing-teaching

How can you teach other people well something you are unwilling to engage in yourself?
How can you expect a machine or program to think for you? You must do the thinking.

And, because learning how to teach writing and teaching others how to write well requires the teacher to write, I encourage you to think critically about the use of artificial intelligence supports, even and including supports like Google’s Bard, Grammarly, & Quillbot, and especially generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

As with any tool, you need to consider:

What is my purpose for using this tool?
Is this the best tool for the job (for that purpose)?
What are the possible positive outcomes of using the tool? (the affordances?)
What are the possible negative outcomes of using the tool? (the constraints?)
What are the opportunity costs of using this tool?
Do I know how to use the tool effectively?
Do I understand how the tool works?

We will be engaged in an ongoing discussion of using generative AI in writing instruction. I want to be honest and share with you that I don’t have any hard and fast answers about these new technologies, and really, neither does anyone else. I encourage you to be critical of anyone who asserts that these technologies are “all good” or “all bad,” as it should be emphasized that these are tools, and it is in the application of the tools by ethical humans that issues of morality (e.g., good and bad) are determined.

If you use G-AI in the assignments for this course, as directed by the Acceptable Use Policy, you MUST explicitly acknowledge this use. If you fail to acknowledge how and to what extent the platform, program, or application was used, you may receive a failing grade for the assignment. Please take this expectation seriously. Academic misconduct will be reported to the OU Office of Academic Integrity.