Today’s Plan:
- A few resources I have found.
- Canvas: Online Education Consortium Survey
- Graham Project Response Paper(s)
A Few Resources I Have Found
From McIntyre and Fernandes,First, a list of Resources on Refusing, Rejecting, and Rethinking Generative AI in Writing Studies and Higher Education
Second, on the other end of the spectrum, two articles (the first cites the second):
- Gupta and Shivers-McNair, “Wayfinding” through the AI wilderness: Mapping rhetorics of ChatGPT prompt writing on X (formerly Twitter) to promote critical AI literacies
- Ranade et al, “Using rhetorical strategies to design prompts: a human-in-the-loop approach to make AI useful”
From Ranade et al:
Graham Project Response Paper
As I indicated last class, I am going to compress two different projects together–the AI-Generated Paper process reflection and the Graham response. Here I am going to try and layout requirements and possibilities.
What Goes in This Paper?
First, I have a few headings I want you to use in the paper:
- On Writing With AI
- On Assessing AI Writing
- How This Experience Resonates with Something(s) Else I Have Read
- What I Would Say to Graham
- A Final Thought Or Question
Those headings by and large grew out of the suggestions 7 (as of 12:42) people made in the Brainstorming space. What those headings mean and exactly what they cover is, I think, ambiguous enough to give you room to think and wander.
Let me share the first five responses to the question “
#1: I believe we should focus on why it took AI so long to be able to cite quotes or come up with quotes to insert into an essay. This was my biggest struggle in my essay which has made me believe that this type of technology is incredibly hard to prompt. I think it would be interesting to look over everyone’s AI-prompting questions concerning to the quotes and see what everyone did differently.
#2: I am really curious to see what prompting strategies worked over others. Is there a trend where more prompting made for better papers? Or was it quality? Or perhaps something in between?
#3: Essays from The Third Culture: Roger Schank in “Information is Surprises” advises that “the problem is the idea that knowledge is represented as a set of facts. It’s not. You might want to know those facts, but it’s not the knowing of the facts that’s important. It’s how you got that knowledge, the things you picked up on the way to getting that knowledge, what motivated the learning of that knowledge. Otherwise what you’re learning is just an unrelated set of facts. Knowledge is an integrated phenomenon; every piece of knowledge depends on every other one.” (Unfortunately) He turns this argument toward the possibility (necessity?) of the implementation of “computer programs that can do the kind of one-on-one teaching that a good teacher could do if [they] had the time to do it.” (173-4) It unsettles me that he is suggesting AI to do the kinds of “fact-based teaching” that he warns against in describing the cultivation of knowledge. His suggestion also accompanies Mollick’s suggestions that AI can teach individual students the course material, so that students can have more class time dedicated to engaging in the topic with their teacher. Increasing class sizes hinder this idealized system; even if students in fact do the work outside of class, the time allowed for meaningful interaction of the subject with teacher sin the classroom is divided among each student, and students in larger classes are less likely to speak up, to interact and actively engage with the discussions or activities at hand because “others are already doing it.”
#4: Could be good to reflect on the different topics Graham vs Santos asked us to combat: What does it mean to have AI look at a local issue that may be harder to pull info for as opposed to a broad topic that has a lot of emerging info in the field? What types of essays/assignments might AI provide learning benefits for, and where is it doing the exact opposite? How could this assignment have been different if we would have done the same exact thing Graham did?
#5: Graham says that “Ultimately, higher education is going to have to come to grips with AI text generation. At present, most of the efforts to engage these concerns seem to gravitate either toward AI evangelism or algorithmic despair.” (5) It feels like the two sides are at war a bit: either give students all the tools or deprive them from AI entirely. Where does the middle ground lie between giving students assignments to experience and understand the pitfalls of AI, while simultaneously exposing them to this quickly advancing technology? Is there a version of this assignment that could be helpful for high schoolers/college freshman to learn about what AI can do for them, while not encouraging them to use tools like prompt generation to get around actually writing a paper?
#6: “This isn’t ‘writing’ in the same way that line drills aren’t basketball. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a useful pedagogical role here.” – I wrote my reflection already but this is my only direct quote from the article. I mention Graham a few times indirectly.
Ultimately, yes, I would want to read all of those things, but you probably cannot do all of those things in one paper. So let me move on to….
How Long Should this Paper Be?
This is a doozy. So, my original idea was that the AI reflection would be the longer piece (say 2400 words) and the Graham response the shorter piece (say 1200 words). So that adds up to 3600 words, or 11 pages double-spaced. And that feels about right to me. Say 3200 to 4000 words.
But in writing your paper, I would like you to use all of those headings above. Let’s say at least 250 words a heading? That allows you to give a few of them a quick pass and really focus your attention on one or two of them.
Sources?
I mean, we’ve read a bunch of stuff for class. I’d like it if you bring in one thing from outside of class? But don’t force it. If you’ve been reading stuff in other places that you can bring to bear on these questions, great. If not, then think with some of the things we’ve read here–particularly the Mollick and the Graham.
Paper Format?
Most of you know I prefer single-spaced, block formatted writing. That’s my jam. But you do you. If you turn in something that is double-spaced, I’ll just single-space it.
I don’t really care about APA or MLA format. I do care that I know what sources you are using and can potentially look them up if I need to read more. That means putting some AP (journalist) style context information in the body of your paper. If you don’t want to do that, they feel free to put on a more formal Works Cited or References at the end of the paper. Whatever makes you happy and lets me find the stuff you are citing/paraphrasing/thinking through.
When Should This Paper Be Due?
Another tricky one. Look, I am in grading hell right now and drowning in papers that I don’t have the energy or focus to read. Your papers will undoubtedly be a lot more fun to read, and I am looking forward to that, but I’m going to be realistic that I won’t even fucking touch them until the 22nd (I have an article submission due the 15th and a sabbatical application due the 19th, and some 301 job reports to grade and a whole set of first-year project proposals to review before I can get to these papers). So, a natural due date seems to be the 21st at midnight.
But that leaves us with the question of what to do in class next week. My answer is that you read the shorter version of papers. We do 8 on Tuesday and 8 on Thursday. We can call it sharing works in progress if that helps? Think of this as a Write-Up, a one-page, single spaced paper you’ll read to the class. You will get 8 minutes. Timer running. I would ask that you transform the selection of your paper into something that has, as Aristotle would say, a beginning, middle, and an end. Something that doesn’t just feel ripped out of the middle of a longer piece.
Tuesday readers:- Amber
- Rose
- Sam
- Jaiden
- Jocab [Sorry]
- Carly
- Luna
- Matt
