The Future of Academic Writing and Its Instruction in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The arrival of new platforms like ChatGPT hit academia by storm this past winter. Suddenly, technology had evolved far enough to produce plausible academic prose in a variety of genres. Why should students write essays if software could do it for them? What questions do platforms like ChatGPT raise about authorship and academic integrity? If we look past the alarmist headlines, from The Atlantic Monthly’s report that the “student essay is dead” (Marche, 2022) to the FAZ headline about the “Ende der Hausarbeit” (Bach & Wessels, 2022), we can see larger questions of interest to us all: how do we design assignments to encourage meaningful writing (Anderson et al., 2015; Eodice et al., 2017)? How can our teaching remain responsive to the technologies students use (Delagrange, 2011; Gallagher, 2020; McKee & DeVoss, 2013)? How are new technologies changing the writing and reading processes and what are the implications of both for the future of our curricula (Brandt, 2014; McKee & DeVoss, 2013; Vee, 2017)? This presentation gives participants an opportunity to draw on current institutional resources, including expertise housed within writing centers, to develop informed practices in the teaching of research in the age of artificial intelligence. Influential and emerging frameworks will be shared to prompt discussion and transformative teaching and learning on your campuses.