Faculty and Instructors

Designing Writing Assignments in an Age of AI 

Assignment Design

Responding to Student Writing & Working with English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Writing

The goals of this workshop are to learn about the new Large Language Models (LLMs) like Chat GPT and their possible roles in writing instruction. We will begin with an overview of current models, their rapid rate of evolution, and what they can and cannot do; we will also review the perils of automated AI detection. We will then move to exploring learning goals for teaching writing and the situations under which incorporating LLMs might enhance student learning. As part of this work, we will focus on how to communicate clear objectives and expectations to the student around use of LLMs.  This will allow students to develop strategies to meet new writing objectives while building on prior knowledge of writing practices. We will spend a substantial amount of time revising existing assignments, so please bring current assignment prompts or ideas to work on.

The goals of this workshop are to learn about and utilize backward design to construct effective writing assignments. We will begin by identifying relevant goals and move from there towards constructing assignments that communicate clear objectives and expectations to the student. This will allow students to develop strategies to meet new writing objectives while building on prior knowledge of writing practices. We will spend a substantial amount of time beginning to develop assignments or revising existing assignments, so please feel free to bring current assignment prompts or ideas to work on.

The goals of this workshop are to learn about and use a small number of guiding principles to construct a response-to-writing process that involves both the student and instructor productively, while maximizing student learning. We will begin by identifying guiding principles for giving feedback on any student writing, and then explore ways to build connection with students who come from a wide variety of backgrounds (linguistically, culturally, and otherwise), with an aim towards understanding the disparate causes of writing issues for ESOL students and what it is reasonable to address within the space of a semester.  We will spend a substantial amount of time identifying particular writing concerns and deciding which ones to respond to, as well as practicing giving short feedback, so please feel free to bring samples of student writing in your discipline (we will also have some samples).

The goals of this workshop are to learn about and use a small number of guiding principles to construct an environment and process in which students can effectively use peer review to develop their own writing. We will begin by covering some guiding principles around a sequential writing process and the role feedback can play in this process. We will then move on to discussing how to teach students to  give useful feedback at multiple stages in the writing process, and how to address student concerns about peer feedback. We will spend a substantial amount of time exploring different peer review models and integrating them with writing assignments, so please feel free to bring samples of assignments and student writing in your discipline (we will also have some samples).