All Resources

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Genre and Form with Tracery

This assignment, by Mark Sample, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: In this assignment, students work with HTML, CSS, Javascript, and JSON templates in order to design a website that generates new content out of pre-established rules and word banks. No prior coding or web development experience …

Different Ways of Narrating with Curveship-js

This assignment, by Nick Montfort, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: Students are assigned to generate variations of an underlying story using a system designed for this purpose. The goals are (1) to use the core aspects of narrative, events and their representation; (2) to link narrative …

cmpttnl cnstrnt: An Exercise in Constraint and Prompt Engineering

This assignment, by Douglas Luman, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: As new context-aware generative models challenge the human relationship to language, students benefit from first-hand observation of these models’ successes and limitations. Using these models often requires using “prompts” (natural language-based directions) to guide their output. …

Spellcraft & Translation: Conjuring with AI

This assignment, by Dana LeTriece Calhoun, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment invites undergraduate students to create “spells,” a poem based on a wish, and prompt an LLM to write a spell of its own, then reflect on their input and LLM output compared to …

Cyborg Texts: A Procedural Creativity Assignment

This assignment, by Jason Boyd, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment engages undergraduate students in the hands-on practice of procedural creativity through playing with, ‘hacking,’ or building text generators that produce creative outputs. Students are asked to draw upon the material covered in lectures and …

Critical Assessment and Analysis Exercise

This assignment, by Nathan Murray and Elisa Tersigni, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks first-year critical writing students to evaluate the reliability, factuality, and internal reasoning of three anonymized texts, one written by AI, that present conflicting opinions or information. By considering the strengths …

Learning about Text Technology through the LLM Generation of Papers

This assignment, by Nick Montfort, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: Students are assigned to generate a paper about a highly specific, recent text technology, using a free Large Language Model, and then to reflect on this. Our goals: (1) highlight new aspects of the writing process, …

Rhetorical Analysis of Predictive LLMs

This assignment, by Alan Knowles, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks students to train a large language model (LLM) to generate Twitter posts in the style of specific accounts via a process known as few-shot learning, which trains the LLM on a small number …

Transforming Writing Assignments with AI: Approaches for Using Artificial Intelligence for Fostering Student Engagement and Comprehension

This assignment, by Daniel Hutchinson (History) and Erin Jensen (English), is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks first-year undergraduate history and English students to use AI writing models to aid in accessing and understanding readings on specific topics. Students used AI to understand the texts …

Neuroqueering AI: The Text Generator as Emergent Collaborator

This assignment, by Natalie Goodman, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment first tasks students with creating their own text generator using a premade module and then asks them to reflect on the experience of directing an LLM-generated composition. Students will choose a dataset to train …

Understanding Markov Chains

This assignment, by Gabriel Egan, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: In this undergraduate assignment, students use a manually applied algorithm to generate a Markov Chain from a given short extract of language. Included here are precise instructions with diagrams for two activities where students develop structures …

Testing ChatGPT Response Variety to Introduce Natural Language Processing

This assignment, by Elisa Beshero-Bondar, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This sequence of assignments progressively introduces students to natural language processing (NLP) through repeated prompt experiments with ChatGPT. Students are beginners learning Python and NLP. Accessing ChatGPT and writing prompt experiments successfully provided the basis for …

Made Not Only By Me: Coauthoring a Children’s Book with Text and Image Generation

This assignment, by Brandee Easter, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks undergraduate students to explore image and text generation technologies to create a short, illustrated children’s book. Although text and image generation technologies are different, experimenting with them in parallel challenges students to reflect …

The Grand Exhibition of Prompts

This assignment, by Mark C. Marino and Rob Wittig, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: The Grand Exhibition of Prompts, a netprov In this collaborative creative writing game on a threaded discussion platform students experiment with AI image-making programs, but concentrate on the expressive, literary power of …

AI for Editing

This assignment, by Nupoor Ranade, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks students to generate a complex essay using an AI text generation tool, edit the essay using principles taught in class to improve the readability score of the generated content. Students …

Professional Writing for Healthcare

This assignment, by Heidi McKee, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: In this project, via a series of scaffolded assignments, students selected and read medical journal articles and then drafted and revised research summaries for lay audiences, exploring, analyzing, and integrating the use of …

Translating a Policy Document into Plain English

This assignment, by Timothy Laquintano, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks undergraduate students to translate a complex policy document into plain English and then compare their output to the output of a large language model asked to do the same task. …

Text Generators in Technical Communication: Summarizing Technical Documents

This assignment, by Douglas Eyman, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks students to research a wide range of text analysis and summarization tools and carry out an assessment task to gauge how well these tools can summarize technical documents. The students …

Analysis of Iterations of Responses to Human Prompts: ChatGPT and Automated Writing

This assignment, by Huiling Ding, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: Generative AI and large language models such as GPT-3.5 introduce new tools and challenges to writing classrooms. This assignment aims to both introduce students to these new tools and to help them cultivate …

The Paranoid Memorandum: A Generative AI Exercise for Professional Communication

This classroom activity, by Jason Crider, is from TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This classroom activity engages students in an undergraduate technical and professional writing course in the critical evaluation of workplace communication alongside the specter of AI writing platforms. In small groups, students draft …