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| The first batch of major writing assignments will come in soon (if it hasn’t already), so I want to take a moment to dwell on the positive. In my class last semester, it was clear that only a small minority of students were misusing AI. Participants in the November Teaching Matters session on AI in writing instruction reported similar experiences. Most of our students are submitting their own work.
If, like me, you find yourself overwhelmed with frustration when you suspect that a student is misusing AI, try to redirect some of that mental space toward the students who don’t misuse it. It’s tempting to commit a lot (if not all) of our emotional energy toward the misuse. But the students who are not misusing it deserve our emotional energy as well. Giving those students positive feedback and encouragement for simply producing their own work, especially if it isn’t the best work, is an important piece of the new reality we find ourselves in. When students engage in cognitive labor to do their own work, they are learning, even if what they produce is not great. Students need to know that. One of my goals this semester is to help students feel good about and take pride in the process of learning to reduce the focus on the final product. |