Ideas for incorporating AI into the writing process

Generative AI tools are here to stay. Our students will need skills such as prompt literacy, creativity, adaptability, and ethics to thrive in an AI powered world. If possible, writing teachers should consider how and when AI might be successfully incorporated into writing tasks and/or the writing process in a course that you teach. In this chapter you will find a list of ways that tools such as ChatGPTcan be incorporated strategically into the brainstorming, drafting, and revising stages of writing. In the next chapter we offer examples of writing assignments that intentionally incorporate AI to motivate critical thinking and to help students understand these tools–their risks and benefits–more fully.

In the list below, students are invited to make use of generative AI. These suggestions also require students to think about how variations in chatbot prompts yield different outputs. Thus students begin to learn and understand “prompt engineering,” a skill that requires critical as well as flexible and creative thinking.

Here are some example prompts students might ask generative AI chatbots  at various points in the writing process:

Brainstorming. Students could make use of AI as they brainstorm a topic and develop a set of questions for a larger writing project. For example, they could:

• Ask a chatbot to narrow or broaden a topic or a research question
• Ask a bot to Identify gaps in a particular field
• Ask what kind of writing is typical or most persuasive in a particular field
• Ask it to produce multiple ways to argue a particular issue (for, against, both sides)

For examples of how to incorporate generative AI (specifically ChatGPT) into the brainstorming process, see these sample assignments created by UW-Madison School of Engineering Teaching Faculty, Nathan Jung.

Researching. Although students should not rely on generative AI tools to conduct research for them, AI may be useful in some ways as students conduct research for a paper:

• AI can summarize or synthesize well-known texts on a particular topic (though it’s always important for students to cross reference and double check syntheses)
• AI can help analyze, consider, or compare different kinds of data
• AI might highlight different kinds of methodologies for students to use to conduct research or to present data

Drafting.

• Getting started writing–AI could generate multiple potential outlines and help students consider different organizational structures
• Getting unstuck–students can use AI to generate ideas to further develop an argument
• Students could prompt AI to write a draft from their research question (keeping privacy concerns in mind) and consider the shortcomings and potential strengths of the AI draft.
• Students might prompt AI to generate 3-5 different ways to consider certain evidence.
• Students might feed a paragraph into AI to get feedback on its strengths or weanesses
• Students can prompt AI to review a “reverse outline” of a paper for coherence and logical flow.

Editing

• Students might submit a paragraph or two of their paper and ask AI to review it for patterns of grammatical or punctuation errors or to make suggestions on style or tone.
• Students could submit a portion of their paper to receive feedback on how it conforms to the conventions of the discipline.