This post is a part of our ongoing series on teaching in a post-AI classroom called Bits on Bots. Be sure to follow along with posts tagged with "Bits on Bots."
I sat down with them and, in the span of an hour, had created a cute poem and a KETO cake recipe (with the wrong ingredients, BTW). The outputs were fun, but I couldn’t see much further than “shiny new thing.” Then, a software engineering major said to me, “with the right input, I can get outputs that will help me be a better writer.” That was my Eureka moment, one where students actually told me that this tool could help them write rhetorically. So, I set out to do some tinkering myself to think about how we could facilitate effective writing while still maintaining the value of process over product — a bedrock of learning critical thinking in first-year writing courses.
Our class used Andrea Lunsford’s Everyday Writer that semester, so I started there. In her handbook, Lunsford discusses the Rhetorical Triangle as a model for brainstorming and iterating on a draft. The “iterating” part of the writing process, which asks students to re-visit text, audience, context, and communicator, helped me imagine how ChatGPT could be integrated into a student’s writerly journey. I then thought about how my students advised me to use ChatGPT: to talk to it through the content box, almost like texting a friend (computer scientists call this natural language processing (NLP)). Lunsford’s triangle and her discussion of the writing process in Section 2g, made me think about how a conversation with an AI Assistant like ChatGPT could engage emerging writers in a process that mimicked an offline process. I had already employed a process that helped students produce writing that demonstrated both their critical thought and alignment with academic conventions.
TBH, the idea of “cheating” never crossed my mind and was never even mentioned in this or any of my classes by students. They were genuinely excited by the process of iterating with ChatGPT, not interested in short-cutting. If anything, they were more engaged with writing than I had seen in semesters prior. If you are interested in this aspect of the generative AI conversation, stay tuned in this space. I have some interesting data to share over the next few posts. Here’s a sneak peek: 78% of students surveyed think that AI might be the future of writing; 35% would take a specific class on how to use AI for writing. Almost all students reported some version of this mantra: we need to keep humans at the helm of AI-human collaboration.
I wanted to find a way to capture the spirit of process that was non-linear and authentically iterative, just like the impromptu conversations my students were having with ChatGPT that first day.
So, I went back to The Writer’s Loop, which I co-authored with my friend Dr. Lauren Ingraham. The Writer’s Loop is a born-digital text that describes a model of writing that is both iterative and purposefully recursive. The process we developed in that text helped me re-imagine how typed ChatGPT conversations, guided by proven rhetorical elements, could sustain critical thinking while increasing students’ engagement in the process and, most importantly, help them create writing in their own voices. Finally, I took this draft framework back to my first-year students in January 2023.
We worked on what computer scientists call a multi-shot process, that has become the Rhetorical Prompt Engineering Framework and the Ethical Wheel of Prompting. Both of these frameworks keep the human at the helm of AI collaboration. They are, of course, a work in progress.
Over the next several semesters, I tested and revised the framework to meet students where they were and to help them engage fully with a model they could and would use as their base for conversing with an AI Assistant. I infused the Framework with a known generative AI process called prompt engineering. What I learned from folks who guide ethical outputs with AI assistants is similar to what students learn as they work through their own writing processes. Simply put, this AI-infused process helps students prompt their way to a useful and reliable product, without short-cutting critical thinking. In the semesters since 2023, students have overwhelmingly responded to this process in positive and creative ways. More importantly, they have used it in first-year writing classes as well as in their majors and have reported that they feel more confident not only in their writing but in their ability to communicate complex ideas to multiple audiences in diverse ways. And about curricular alignment? We can measure that as well! Stay tune for a blog post this semester on the topic of assessing and aligning generative AI prompting to learning outcomes.
Just like I appreciate and respect multiple student perspectives on generative AI use, I also respect yours. We each come to this conversation with diverse skills, stories, and insights. What links us together is a commitment to serving our students to help them succeed and lead in their post-college lives. I hope that my small piece of the Bits and Bots space opens up my perspectives as it does yours. If you are interested in trying out the Rhetorical Prompt Engineering Framework, please feel free to download it here and iterate on it. If you are interested in the Ethical Wheel of Prompting, which I will discuss more in-depth in upcoming posts, please do the same. If you just want to chat about your own perspectives, please also reach out. I’m interested to hear your GPT origin stories and how you have (or haven’t) infused AI Assistants into your own pedagogies.
Thanks for reading.
Jeanne Beatrix Law is a Professor of English and Director of Composition at Kennesaw State University, focusing on generative AI (genAI) and digital civil rights histography. Her AI literacy work has global reach, including multiple presentations of her Rhetorical Prompt Engineering Framework at conferences like Open Educa Berlin and the Suny Council on Writing. She has led workshops on ethical genAI for diverse institutions and disciplines at Eastern Michigan, Kent State, and CUNY’s Ai Subgroup. She and her students have authored publications on student perceptions of AI in professional writing. Jeanne also co-authored The Writer's Loop: A Guide to College Writing and contributed to the Instructor's Guide for Andrea Lunsford's Everyday Writer. She has authored eight Coursera courses on genAI and advocates for ethical AI integration in educational spaces in both secondary and higher education spaces as a faculty mentor for the AAC&U’s AI Pedagogy Institute.
