Designing writing assignments that motivate original and independent thinking

Text-generating LLMs produce combinations of words, phrases, and characters through predictive modeling—the AI does not actually think, know, or believe in the ways our students are learning to do. For instance, ChatGPT can only summarize, synthesize, and analyze information to the extent that similar summary, synthesis, and analysis is already freely available on the internet. With this in mind, consider these recommendations for encouraging students to think with or through writing rather than generate writing that sounds like thinking:

• Be transparent with students. Acknowledge the availability of tools like ChatGPT and invite students to think critically with you about the affordances, limitations, and ethics of using LLMs for coursework, research, and other academic endeavors. When giving a writing assignment, make clear the purpose of the assignment, the task students should complete, the genre or form of the assignment, and the audience. Identify for students how particular writing tasks accomplish learning goals in a course.
• Incorporate low-stakes writing. Informal writing activities—especially when used during class time—can help focus students’ attention on the work of thinking and learning through writing without the opportunity to outsource that labor to a chatbot. See the WAC program’s chapter on low-stakes writing in this Pressbook for more advice (and examples!) on how to design engaging and effective low-stakes writing activities.
• Design writing assignments targeted to specific audiences. While chatbots can very effectively produce text that sounds like well-known authors or public figures, they can’t actually think or share their thinking. Consider creating assignments that require students to write to a particular audience and share their thinking about how/why they made the choices they did in tone, style, and what to include/exclude. See, for example, this assignment that asks students to produce scientific writing that is inclusive of diverse audiences, or this assignment from UW-Madison chemistry professor Christy Temonti that asks students to write a letter about climate change to their home high school’s board of education.
• Ask students to synthesize course material with personal experience in a writing assignment. Chatbots do not have access to students’ thoughts and experiences. Asking students to produce writing that reflects on what they’ve learned in your course-perhaps by comparing current understanding to previous knowledge–encourages students to use original and critical thinking. See this example from former UW classics professor Nandini Pandey whose prompt (write and present a funeral oration) asks students to consider their own thinking about oratio and about specific course content to develop a funeral oration for the city of Rome. Another example, from political science professor Kathy Cramer, asks students to synthesize their in-and out-of-class experiences with their personal understanding of “citizenship”. Finally, consider this assignment from anthropology professor Sissel Schroeder. Schroeder asks students in Anthropology 112 to draw a “mental map” of their hometowns/cities/counties and then reflect on the place and the process. Students must use their memories and their understanding of course concepts to complete the assignment.
• Ask students to conduct original research or draw upon current or local events to complete an assignment. Since chatbots draw upon text that is at least 1-2 years old, they can’t produce writing about recent or local happenings. As you design an assignment, consider what the bots don’t or can’t know. Students might conduct original research and write about it as they do in this assignment from Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies professor Ankur Desai, this assignment from communication arts professor Catalina Toma, and this assignment from Political Science professor Yoshiko Herrera. They might also engage with a local or community issue as in this assignment from Composition and Rhetoric (English) professor Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke or with campus events or locations as geography professor Suzy Ziegler asks students to do in this collaborative paper.
• Teach writing as a process with stages that build toward a final version rather than as a one and done product. By designing smaller assignments that scaffold increasingly complex learning goals (for instance, a concept map, a research proposal, a draft and subsequent revision of the research paper) you are able to see the development of a student’s ideas. It may be more challenging for a student to rely on AI to produce the paper. See the examples in the chapter on Sequencing and Scaffolding Writing Assignments in this Sourcebook for examples of assignments that break larger writing projects into smaller steps. Create opportunities for students to share their work in stages–with you and with their peers.
• Encourage or require students to work collaboratively. Writing collaboratively means that students brainstorm and plan a paper in pairs or small groups where each person contributes to content and to decisions about the final version of a text. Group work can alleviate the stress of writing alone, can enable students to learn subject matter more deeply through conversations, can help students understand disciplinary or genre conventions as they collaborate and break down a large project into sections, and can replicate the writing often done in workplace settings. As long as group work is well scaffolded and supported, it can produce excellent results and meaningful experiences for student writers. Professor Ramzi Fawaz assigns a group writing project in his English course as does Professor John Yin in his biochemical engineering course. The University of Michigan’s Sweetland Center for Writing has a helpful guide for supporting students doing a collaborative writing project.
• Supplement a writing assignment with alternate ways for students to represent their knowledge beyond text (e.g. design and present a slideshow on the topic or facilitate a discussion). A presentation that goes beyond merely reading a paper out loud might require a student to reflect on their writing process, to account for choices of evidence, and to talk in depth about the topic. Similarly, facilitating a discussion on the topic requires substantial knowledge and fluency on the topic.
• Design complex (but not confusing) prompts that require critical thinking and problem solving skills to accomplish. Make sure your prompts are “authentic” and “meaningful.” See the section on designing assignments in this Sourcebook.