Teaching with Writing Blog

Generative AI has created some challenging new realities for instructors. While initial concerns focused on academic integrity and the risks of GenAI being used as a replacement for student work, emerging concerns are developing around how different students are impacted differently by these advances. Last fall, Indiana University was subject to media scrutiny and a lawsuit after its AI detection technology, Turnitin.com, systematically produced false positive results for work submitted by multilingual students.

The ability to paraphrase is a pivotal skill for writing and learning, but our tacit understanding of the complex purposes of paraphrasing is often clouded by its apparent simplicity. We may tell students that paraphrasing is simply “restating information from a source in your own words,” but choosing to include restatement from sources involves a much more significant set of questions about purpose, audience, writing task, and form.

Last month’s Teaching with Writing blog focused on strategies instructors can use when providing students with feedback on their writing. This month’s blog turns the tables by describing tools students can use when providing instructors with feedback on their writing instruction. Yes, this sort of feedback is routinely gathered at the end of the semester, but getting it at a semester’s midpoint is even better.

Formative feedback is one of the most powerful ways for instructors to help students develop as learners and writers. By receiving early feedback on works in progress, students learn to revise based on advice from their readers and to actively consider how their intended audience might understand their work.

In recent years, instructors have heard a great deal about the benefits of fostering a positive classroom climate. Not only does a positive classroom climate help boost students' performance in their assignments and assessments, but it can also encourage students' persistence with challenging courses and topics.

Research in teaching with writing consistently emphasizes the importance of early, formative feedback on writing as critical for students' growth as writers. Formative comments on works in progress can affirm effective writing choices, correct misconceptions and misunderstandings, and coach students on various improvements they can make to their written work. The labor of revising and extending their writing based on expert feedback provides some of the most engaging and practical lessons for developing writers.

When students recall the definition of a concept or apply a formula or principle to a problem, we are presented with a challenge. While their answers may be correct, how do we know whether they have a developed sense of the concept or can simply provide solutions in clearly defined contexts? Similarly, while students may recall learning about a concept, method, or tool in a prior course, is remembering a topic the same as conceptual understanding?

Co-written by Kate Peterson

In previous years, August blog entries have focused on using syllabus descriptions to clarify purposes, tasks, and audiences for student writing, describing writing expectations in your field, and