Exploring how GenAI Impacts Cognitive Skills in the Writing Process
Project Overview
As teachers incorporate GenAI tools into our classes, we must be careful not to conflate the outputs of AI-assisted writing with the cognitive skills our students came to college to develop. There is a profound difference between prompting an LLM to produce ideas for you and strengthening the neural pathways your brain uses to generate ideas of your own.
My project seeks to better understand which critical thinking skills college students employ in each step of the writing process and how those skills shift when GenAI is used to help complete the same step. I hope to contribute to the development of research-backed recommendations teachers can use to incorporate GenAI tools into the writing process with confidence we are maximizing our students’ skills, potential, and well-being, not de-skilling or setting back their cognitive development.