“Writing is thinking” asserts compositionist John Warner in a 2023 column on AI in Inside Higher Ed. “If text is produced without thinking, that’s not writing. That’s something else.” 

If you agree with Warner, it follows that the best way to respond to the rise of generative AI may be to continue or expand the use of common practices in writing pedagogy. As Warner notes, “The route to thinking is rooted in process and experience, rather than forms and artifacts,” and so too are best practices in writing  pedagogy—for example, teaching writing as an iterative, interactive process and asking students to regularly reflect on their writing experiences. Process and experience are also central to recent developments in writing pedagogy such as labor-based writing assessment and other alternative approaches to grading. 

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At the same time, writing instructors need to be aware of and adapt to new writing technologies and help students do the same. Students still want and need to learn the distinctively human dimensions of communication, but they also want and need to learn the skills of effective prompt engineering—which are, fundamentally, skills of writing and rhetoric.  The ubiquity of generative AI also requires us to teach information literacy in new ways and to engage new ethical questions around authorship, language difference, and power with our students.

The resources collected here offer some ideas for teaching about and with generative AI in the BU writing classroom. All of these resources focus on process, experience, and critical thinking. Instructors will learn alongside students, and we’ll revisit these suggestions as the technologies continue to evolve.

Teaching Students About AI-Mediated Writing

Teaching recommendations to help orient students to generative AI and college writing

Teaching Writing with Generative AI

Ideas for using generative AI to teach ideation, research, genre, and more

Faculty Voices

A Conversation on Writing, Research, and Inquiry in an AI World, with Pary Fassihi (video)

“Making Research More Accessible with AI” by Aleks Kasztalska (blog post)

“Why Writing Assignments Still Matter in the Age of AI” by Chris McVey (column)

“The Case for Slowing Down” by Christopher McVey (blog post)

AI-Enhanced Learning with Pary Fassihi (podcast)