Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum with AI

Prompt Engineering: Rephrase Prompts

By rephrasing prompts, students learn how different wording can elicit varied responses, leading to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the subject matter as they explore different angles and perspectives.

Prompt Engineering: Regenerate a Response

Students learn to generate and compare multiple responses from a single prompt, which helps them understand how different approaches and wordings can convey varying perspectives and nuances on the same topic.

Prompt Engineering: Conversation

The assignment introduces students to the technique of prompt chaining, teaching them how to build on previous prompts to extract more detailed and precise information, thereby enhancing their query formulation skills.

AI Classroom Activity: Machine Learning

The assignment provides students with practical experience in machine learning by engaging them in activities that involve training algorithms and analyzing data, making complex concepts more accessible through hands-on application.

AI Classroom Activity: Facial Recognition

Students gain practical knowledge of how facial recognition systems work, including the technical aspects of image processing and machine learning algorithms. The assignment emphasizes the importance of discussing the ethical implications of facial recognition technology, encouraging students to think critically about privacy, consent, and bias issues.

The Intelligent Piece of Paper

The assignment encourages students to engage with technology by creating interactive paper circuits, combining traditional paper-based materials with modern electronics to enhance learning.

Generate and Enact a Writing Style: Examining Writing Style Though Generative AI

Students collaborate with peers from different disciplines, using AI text generators. The collaboration enhances their understanding of writing styles across various fields and fostering diverse perspectives in their work.

Using AI Text as Prompts for Critical Analysis

Students are provided with AI-generated texts relevant to the course topics and are asked to comment, review, and expand on these texts using text-editing software.

Writing Against the Machine: Debating with ChatGPT

Students use ChatGPT to generate counterclaims or alternative arguments to their initial thesis. This process helps them refine, extend, and evolve their argumentative skills by considering multiple perspectives.

Genre Generators

Students begin by collaboratively analyzing implementations of text generators, such as Christopher Strachey’s Love Letter Generator. Next, students work in groups to create non-executable conceptual programs designed to produce new instances of chosen genres.

Using LLMs as Peer Reviewers for Revising Essays

Students utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT to assist in the peer review process by generating responses to common peer review prompts.

Synthetic Metacognition: Iterating Prompts with GPTs

Students engage in prompt engineering by iteratively refining and tweaking the set of instructions given to a Large Language Model (LLM). Through a collaborative workshop format, students work in groups to analyze the AI’s output, discuss its strengths and weaknesses, and propose improvements.

Decoding an AI Bot’s Chatting Pattern: Text Generating Technology Analysis Assignment

Students engage in sustained conversations with AI chatbots like ChatGPT, analyzing the bots’ writing and thinking patterns. The assignment prompts students to consider the ethical implications of using AI chatbots, including issues related to plagiarism, authorship, and the potential displacement of human labor.

Repetition

This assignment serves as a beginner-level programming exercise that introduces students to the concept of iteration using for loops. By writing code that repeats a word or phrase 50,000 times, students gain a fundamental understanding of how loops work in programming.

AI in First Year Writing Courses

The assignment introduces an “AI Standards of Conduct” framework that differentiates between AI-assisted and AI-generated writing. The assignment encourages students to reflect on the ethical implications of using AI in writing.

Professor Bot: An Exercise in Algorithmic Accountability

Students explore and reflect on algorithmic accountability through a speculative scenario where an AI called Professor Bot grades entrance essays.

Teaching Social Identity and Cultural Bias Using AI Text Generation

Students reflect on their personal histories and preferences by participating in an interactive survey. These responses are then analyzed using text generation models to explore how AI interprets and predicts social identities, highlighting the biases and assumptions inherent in AI technology.

The Term Paper Turing Test

Students use accessible language models to generate parts of their term papers. This hands-on experiment helps students explore the capabilities and limitations of AI in writing, as well as the ethical dimensions of using such tools.

Promoting Ethical Artificial Intelligence Literacy

By comparing AI-generated outputs with their own work and reflecting on these comparisons, students develop enhanced metacognitive skills, which are crucial for their personal and professional growth.

Who’s Talking: Dada, Machine Writing, and the Found: RiTa.js for Visual Artists and Writers

Students generate text using both analog cut-up techniques and a simple Markov procedure. This exercise introduces them to found art, encouraging them to critically examine issues of property and power in the context of generative text and its sources.