Not Another AI Post: Dealing with AI Overload

[mimmoore]

This morning, a colleague shared an announcement with me via email. Embedded in the email was a comment about generative AI possibly taking over much of the routine work of scholarly editing and publication in the future.

I closed the email, shut my eyes, and thought, I need a vacation from all things AI.

AI is everywhere: the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education offer AI-themed articles and advertisements daily, while various departments at my university are hosting brown bags on the topic. Our linguistics club hosted a symposium on AI, with two PhD candidates speaking on their research in AI and applied linguistics. Our department’s WAC/WID committee is hosting a series of Webinars on AI in college writing, and the administration sent a lengthy AI survey for faculty to complete. I follow colleagues who focus on AI, including linguists like Emily Bender, composition/rhetoric specialists like Marc Watkins, and my fellow Bits bloggers Stuart Selber and April Lidinsky. My first-year composition course this semester has focused on writing about AI.

With just two weeks left in this academic term, I have reached AI saturation. 

I am going to set aside—for a while—all the urgency surrounding AI and think about what has driven my teaching and thinking over 30 years: working with students at the intersection of applied linguistics and composition studies. Nothing has been so energizing and restorative as dialogue with these students as they explore concepts of language, rhetoric, or pedagogy—and discover those concepts as sense-making tools.

This semester, I worked with five writing fellows at our university, and as part of an internship course, they completed annotated bibliographies, choosing articles from a list of journals and classic pieces that I provided for them. I sat down this week to read their summaries and reflections.

Here’s just a sampling of some of their initial choices:

• Elizabeth Wardle’s 2012 piece, “Creative Repurposing for Expansive Learning: Considering ‘Problem-Exploring’ and ‘Answer-Getting’ Di...
• Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu’s 1999 article, “Representing the ‘Other’: Basic Writers And the Teaching of Basic Writing.” 
• A 2024 piece by Naitnaphit Limlamai, Emily Wilson, and Anne Ruggles Gere, “‘There are Other Ways to Answer This’: Development of pedagogical content Knowledge via Listening as ....” 
• A 2024 pedagogy piece by Megan Heise, “Teaching Students How to Give and Receive Peer Review Feedback."
• Mark Blaauw-Hara’s 2006 classic, "Why Our Students Need Instruction in Grammar, and How We Should Go about It." 
• A 2018 piece by Elizabeth Busekrus, "A Conversational Approach: Using Writing Center Pedagogy in Commenting for Transfer in the Classroom."

These writing fellows, who had been tutoring in literature, psychology, and corequisite English classes, bubbled with insight and questions: 

• I have never thought about this, but it makes so much sense! 
• I have seen this before…
• This explains why…
• I cannot wait to try this in my small group sessions…
• This reminds me of…
• So does this mean…?
• I remember reading about this in another class, but now it makes sense. 
• That is SO COOL.

I know that I will eventually have to return to AI-related concerns. And the fellows have dealt with these concerns already (What do we do if we suspect the draft was AI-generated?). 

But for this week, exploring these texts with my students was a welcome respite from all things AI.

Have you experienced AI-information overload? What brings you energy and joy in those moments?

[smccormack]

Yes! I have AI-information overload as well! I definitely see it's potential as a tool, but I worry about my students and whether they are learning the basic grammar/writing knowledge that they need to function without AI. Have you seen any articles addressing this question?