First-Year Composition

Writing Against the Machine: Debating with ChatGPT

This assignment, by Justin Lewis & Ted Wayland, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment challenges students to use LLMs to map the counterarguments to their main claims through a process of counterclaiming. By writing prompts that position the AI as argumentative adversary, students can refine, …

Synthetic Metacognition: Iterating Prompts with GPTs

This assignment, by Kyle Booten, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment suggests that “prompt engineering”—iteratively tinkering with and refining the set of instructions that guides the output of an LLM—is a worthwhile writing activity that can encourage students to be metacognitive about the “moves” that …

AI in First Year Writing Courses

This assignment, by Marc Watkins, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This chapter discusses the integration of generative AI (GenAI) in education, particularly in first-year writing courses. Recognizing the transformative potential of GenAI, the assignment proposes framing principles to guide students towards ethical and responsible AI use …

The Term Paper Turing Test

This assignment, by Paul Fyfe, is from the TextGenEd collection in the WAC Clearinghouse Repository. The Abstract from the site explains: This assignment asks students to use an accessible language model to write their term papers—with the goal of fooling the instructor. While initially framed as something sneaky or as a shortcut for writing, the assignment makes …

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 …

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 …

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 …