Resisting the Pleasure Machine: Using Experiential Learning and CAIL to Support Student Researchers

Description: Generative AI tools often encourage “user-pleasing” responses that flatten voice, assume audiences, and narrow inquiry. Experiential learning—through observation, interviews, reflection, and engagement beyond the classroom—provides a powerful counterweight to this tunnel vision by grounding writing in lived, situated experience that AI cannot fully reproduce or anticipate. This talk (led by Holly Schaaf and Max White) centers experiential learning (EL) as a foundation for developing meaningful, critical AI literacy in writing and language classrooms. Drawing on classroom examples, the presenters will show how EL activities help students recognize the limits of AI-generated knowledge. The goal is not to reject AI, but to help students use it to test ideas, challenge assumptions, and reassert their own values, judgments, and rhetorical choices.