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From: Beth McMurtrie
Subject: Teaching: How to encourage students to write without AI
This week, I:
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This week, I:
A lot of students are using generative AI to write their essays for them, even when professors explicitly ask them not to. Sometimes it’s because students think the AI sounds better than they do, or they were taught in high school that being technically correct is the most important part of writing.
But professors in writing-intensive courses would rather read authentic and imperfect writing than some sterile AI-shaped product. Are there ways to minimize AI use, short of policing students?
A few weeks ago, I wrote about one professor’s approach, which you can read here. This week I’m sharing another faculty member’s story. I found it noteworthy because she radically changed her assignments and her thinking about what she wants her students to learn. You can read her full description in this Facebook post — and the extensive comments that follow — but I’ll excerpt and summarize it here.
Kimberly Kirner, an anthropology professor at California State University at Northridge, teaches a 4/4 course load of writing-intensive classes that enroll 100 to 200 students a year, at a college in which, she wrote, many students are underprepared and overworked. A key element of her new approach to writing is conducting developmental-writing workshops in class, in which students set writing goals for themselves. Here’s how she structures and evaluates her students’ work.
“I have a ‘C Checklist’ that is four to five criteria that are very basic (your own voice, on topic for class project, minimum page/word count, minimum citation count). Every student self-assesses their writing from other classes in the beginning of the semester and sets three to four goals for themselves around key learning domains (research, writing, cultural theory, cultural competency — I teach cultural anthropology). The students set a B goal for each (easier to reach) and an A goal (a stretch, but feasible).
“Their assessments are done as a combination of credit/no-credit engagement in developmental work in class designed to have frequent iterative feedback and iterative feedback on drafts using their own goals and the checklist. If the student meets their own goals, they get the average of B/A across domains. It doesn’t matter if everything else is awful. If they worked on their own goals and met them, they get that grade. We work on mastering only those small goals and we let the rest go.”
The difference compared to before, she wrote, was dramatic. It eliminated AI use. She also doesn’t use any sort of AI checker. She can tell it’s her student’s voice because they have worked together in class developing it. She was also able to teach them about the ways in which they can use AI and the ways in which it takes away their agency.
“Students have flat out told me that this is the first time many of them have enjoyed writing and built some confidence in years,” she wrote in her post. “Some literally cried at the end of the semester because they felt so much pride in their imperfect work, because it was 100 percent theirs. Not just that they didn’t cheat, but because they felt I valued their ideas, their voice, their gloriously imperfect but oh-so-human work to express their own analytical thoughts.”
Kirner noted that grading under this new system doesn’t take her any longer. That’s because she streamlined her approach. Instead of giving a grade from A to D across five to seven domains, she uses “a simple checklist plus three to four goals at A/B level the students wrote individually.”
The time she saved, she uses now to provide written feedback on an assignment link in Canvas, where students can write and revise frequently, with a record of the ongoing conversation. She did reduce some content in order to add the developmental workshop and one-on-one feedback.
Was this transformation easy? No. Kirner said in an email that she went through a pretty dark period reckoning with AI abuse before she decided to redo her approach. It was an extraordinary amount of work to revise everything. But she has come out feeling even better about her teaching. “When we put product and uniformity first,” she wrote in her email, “students cheat because they don’t see value or interest in developing their own voice, which is nearly always very imperfect.”
On Facebook, Kirner wrote: “After 22 years of teaching this made me reflect in ways I never have and meet my students’ needs in new ways. I’m enjoying reading their work and teaching writing like I never have in the past. I love how different their work is from one another. They love it too, and loved sharing it with their peers. I am proud of us.”
Have you revamped your writing-intensive assignments to discourage AI use? If so, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your story may appear in a future newsletter.
The Chronicle recently surveyed more than 4,000 people employed in higher education to dig into what the workplace is like today for faculty members, staff, and administrators. We asked questions like: Do you feel respected? Has your workload increased? Would you encourage someone to pursue a career at your institution?
Among the series of stories and opinion pieces that have come from the survey, I contributed an article looking at the role that students play in feelings of burnout. I interviewed survey respondents as well as researchers who have studied the topic or conducted research on their own.
One interesting finding: Students don’t seem to be at the root of faculty burnout. It’s all the other things that surround teaching and mentoring that are dragging faculty members down, squeezing out time that they need to spend on teaching. This is why teaching can be both stressful and a source of professional happiness. Professors often say they don’t have time to adapt their teaching to meet the moment, whether it’s to address AI or assist students underprepared for college-level work.
Other articles from the series include:
I hope you find the opportunity to read the series. And if you want to share your thoughts, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com
— Beth
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
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