- Teaching Support and Services
- Guides to Teaching Writing
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- Teaching Writing with Chatbots
- List of GenAI Tools
- GenAI In The Writing Process
- GenAI Multimodal Projects
- Citation Conventions for GenAI and Chatbots
- Writing Genres and GenAI
- Writing Assignments in STEM
- GenAI and Writing in Engineering and Technical Communication
- Linguistic Justice and GenAI
- Sample U-M Syllabus Statements
- Using ChatGPT for Basic Research
- ChatGPT Response to Sample Essay Prompt
- Call for Test Cases
- Steps for ChatGPT Sample First-Year Writing Course Essay Test Case
- Assigning and Managing Collaborative Writing Projects
- Cultivating Reflection and Metacognition
- Giving Feedback on Student Writing
- Integrating Low-Stakes Writing Into Large Classes
- Motivating Students to Read and Write in All Disciplines
- Providing Feedback and Grades to Second Language Students
- Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments
- Supporting Multimodal Literacy
- Teaching Argumentation
- Teaching Citation and Documentation Norms
- Teaching Multimodal Composition
- Teaching Project-based Assignments
- Teaching with ePortfolios
- Using Blogs in the Classroom
- Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing
- OpenAI ChatGPT 3.5 vs UM-GPT: Test Case
- Support for FYWR Courses
- Support for ULWR Courses
- Fellows Seminar
- Writing Prize Nominating
Because ChatGPT and other automated writing technologies are trained to generate text from large language models on the basis of algorithmic likelihood, they are predictably good at producing texts that reproduce very common forms or genres. This can pose both a challenge and an opportunity for teachers who want their students to produce original work but who, for whatever reason, expect that work to conform to the conventions of established genres. Some genres are very tightly defined, as with lab reports; sometimes they are more approximate, as with five-paragraph essays or short stories; and sometimes they are more rhetorical than formal, as with “arguments.”
How can teachers make use of the ease with which automated writing technologies reproduce these genres and forms while still engaging students to produce original work? Here are a few suggestions:
Teach the genre as a genre. Rather than present the conventions as automatic, inevitable, and without origin, spend some time explaining history and problems the genre both solves and potentially creates. The less students assume any given form is natural, the more usefully suspicious they will be of how easily automated writing technologies reproduce genres. Denaturing the genre before asking students to work with it can be useful.
Analyze samples of automatic text as a group. Since it’s so easy for chatbots to produce multiple examples of generic forms quickly, generating and analyzing multiple prompts and examples and discussing successes and failures in their execution can illuminate both the purposes of the genre and the limitations of chatbots.
Ask students to compare their own attempts at the genre to those generated by the automated writing technologies. Since the automatic texts will always reproduce the most common expressions, comparison can help the students recognize average work and thus identify opportunities to exceed it.
Encourage students to think about ways to complement or supplement generic writing. Remember, the goal isn’t to eliminate all writing genres and their uses; genres exist for a reason! However, they aren’t complete in and of themselves: we need to use them thoughtfully, and that involves developing writing that does what those genres cannot. Ask students to think about and practice writing that identifies those gaps and limitations and enriches the work of the genre with novel and innovative approaches and language.
