Generative AI in Writing-Intensive Classrooms
Project Overview
I plan to develop a series of roughly ten research-based lessons/activities that help students grow stronger as writers (and thinkers) who understand how they might consciously and ethically integrate generative AI into their writing practice. I then plan to use these lessons in an upper-division, writing-intensive course that I’ll teach in Fall 2026. In addition to having enrolled students work through these lessons/activities, I’m going to invite them to participate in creating a series of best practices around GenAI use in undergraduate writing at UMN. Students are getting conflicting information about what uses of GenAI (if any) are good (or permissible) in their classes. Whatever guardrails we put around GenAI in our individual classrooms, students need to have some understanding of current technologies and of how to adapt as that technology evolves. Ultimately, the project is not meant to produce static “best practices” that future students will rigidly follow. Rather, I hope to create classroom practices that get each new group of students actively engaged with the process of determining how these technologies might best be used and what constitutes ethical use.