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| I spent my summer developing a suite of AI literacy assignments that are appropriate for writing courses. Over the next several CfLT newsletters, I will share those. I developed them for my ENGL 342: Utopian and Dystopian Fiction class, which I am currently teaching. The first assignment consists of two parts. I’ll elaborate on the first part this week. |
CfLT Newsletter
The posts below are from the CfLT newsletter which includes curated, research-based digital resources to support ongoing faculty development and pedagogical engagement. As of August 2025, CfLT Director Karen Spierling oversees the content. Posts from July 2020-May 2025 were compiled by previous Director Lew Ludwig.
Teaching: Supporting Our Students as Readers
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| As we navigate the fourth week of classes, you may be experiencing that moment when your summer vision of the semester, so carefully laid out in your syllabus, starts to bump up against your students’ busy schedules and reading habits. Although a quiet day in class may sometimes mean that students didn’t do the reading, John Orlando observes that other times it means that “many students simply didn’t get the needed information out of the assigned texts.” |
Tech: Commitment Planning Tool for Time Management
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| Time management is an important skill for academic success. If your students are struggling to plan ahead or are interested in leveling up their time management skills, consider sharing the Commitment Planning Tool with them.
This Google Sheets-based visualization tool has three key advantages:
If your students use this tool, please encourage them to complete the pre-use survey before they start using it and the post-use survey at the end of the semester. |
Teaching: A Fall Equinox Strategy- Accentuate the Positive
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| I know that I’m taking a risk here with this week’s title, throwing it out blithely to an audience professionally trained to be skeptical of the positive and always to look carefully and deeply for the potential negatives of any situation. But please (please!) bear with me.
As we officially head into autumn, with its dwindling daylight hours, intensifying grading loads, fluctuating student (and faculty) energy, and seemingly perpetual chaos in our information streams, it can be easy to focus on frustrations and challenges in the classroom. One |
Voice and Independent Thinking
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| This fall I have redesigned my W101 to experiment with new methods of assessment given that many students will use AI to write their essays. Because the quality of a written artifact is no longer necessarily a sign of student learning or a reflection of their ideas, I have shifted some of my assessment criteria to focus on evidence of student learning. |
Six Powerful Ways to Cultivate Student Attention and Promote Student Success
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| The energy of our September classrooms is part of what keeps us all in this education game. How do you keep that high-level of energy and student focus as the semester builds and everyone’s busy-ness and distraction sets in? Your November self will thank your September self for thinking ahead about strategies for cultivating student attention throughout the semester. |
Teaching: What Students are Saying
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| “I am so excited to be back at Denison and to be using my brain muscles in this way again!”
I heard this last week from a senior who has just returned from an outstanding semester abroad experience but couldn’t stop smiling about being back in our liberal arts setting and digging into her Denison classes. |
Helping students make better AI decisions
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| An important aspect of addressing AI in writing instruction is helping students make better decisions about when and how they use AI to offload cognitive labor. Lori Kumler in ETS created a slide deck with a classroom activity for getting students to think critically about how AI use affects their learning and cognitive abilities. This activity would be appropriate for a class period early in the semester. |
AI Symposium Handbook
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| Did you miss the Fall Faculty Symposium? One of our resources was this Faculty Handbook for AI in Teaching and Learning. It includes information from the different interactive sessions. Please keep in mind, this isn’t a rule book. It’s meant to spark ideas and open conversations about how AI might fit into your teaching. Inside, you’ll find examples and considerations to help you reflect, adapt, and experiment as you see fit. |
On the First Day of Class, Begin with Intrigue
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| Planning the first day of class can be both exciting and overwhelming–so much possibility! Amidst all of our first-day goals, Paul Hanstedt’s article, On the First Day of Class, Begin with Intrigue, encourages us to focus on connecting with our students by setting a tone of curiosity and intrigue that will set you and your students up to work together as a community of thinkers and learners for the semester. |