AI in Writing Instruction
This elective introduces teaching writing in courses where students have AI tools at hand. It centers on one distinction that clarifies, for students and instructors alike, what AI is doing in the composing process. Plan on 3 to 4 hours: about 2 on the activities and the builder, the rest reading.
What this elective asks you to do
- Compare writing WITH AI and writing FOR AI by completing the same task both ways. (Activity 1)
- Write a course AI policy statement for one course. (Activity 2)
- Redesign one assignment so WITH engagement becomes visible and assessable. (Activity 2)
- Evaluate AI detection tools as an assessment instrument. (Activity 3, optional)
Writing WITH AI, Not FOR AI
For writing instructors, the question that matters most is how students use AI. The WITH/FOR distinction (Cole) names two kinds of use with different consequences for learning and for rhetoric. Writing WITH AI uses the tool to extend your thinking. Writing FOR AI hands the thinking to the tool.
The framework applies to instructors who design assignments and to students who complete them. If your course asks students to use AI thoughtfully, it also needs to say what "thoughtfully" means.
AI as Thinking Partner
- Brainstorm ideas, then select, reject, or revise them on your own judgment
- Use AI to generate an outline, then substantially restructure or depart from it
- Ask AI to challenge your argument; use the pushback to strengthen your position
- Prompt AI for counterarguments, then decide which deserve incorporation
- Generate multiple framings of a claim; choose one and articulate why
- Use AI feedback on a draft as one reader among several
AI as Producer
- Submit AI-generated text with minimal engagement or revision
- Use AI to complete tasks without thinking them through
- Accept AI phrasing, structure, or framing without questioning it
- Prompt AI to write the assignment, then copy-edit the result
- Treat AI output as a draft that needs only polishing
- Use AI to skip the hard parts of writing
The WITH/FOR distinction leaves decisions about what to permit or prohibit to you. Use it as an analytical tool. It helps students see what kind of engagement they are having with a task. It helps you design assignments in which WITH engagement is the point.
Writing is a way of thinking. Students learn while they draft, revise, and reconsider, and the final submission records that work. When students write FOR AI, they skip that process. When students write WITH AI in an assignment designed for it, the tool extends and tests their thinking. Ask of any assignment: where does the thinking happen, and who does it?
Going Further in the Digital Communication Certificate
This elective introduces the WITH/FOR framework and its direct applications in writing courses. The Digital Communication Instruction Certificate takes up AI in education in full.
DC Module 3: Teaching with Digital Tools
DC Module 3 covers AI in teaching at length. If you plan to teach AI use throughout a course, build AI literacy assignments, or lead faculty development on AI, start there.
- AI literacy as a transferable competency across disciplines
- Prompt engineering as a rhetorical and pedagogical practice
- Designing assignments that make AI use visible and assessable
- Ethical frameworks for AI in academic writing contexts
- Institutional policy development and course-level policy writing
- AI and the assessment of student writing: what changes and what doesn't
AI, Language, and Access
The WITH/FOR framework carries particular stakes for students whose language backgrounds differ from the dominant academic register. AI creates a real tension for these students. Be ready to name it openly with your class.
AI flattens linguistic diversity. Large language models learn from web text that overrepresents some speakers, including, as Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major, and Shmitchell (2021) note, younger users and those in developed countries. In practice, AI tools tend to return prose in the conventions of standard academic English. When students, multilingual writers among them, use AI to "fix" their prose, the output often strips out the distinctive rhetorical moves and linguistic features of their writing. The result is grammatically conventional and rhetorically thin. The writing starts to sound like a genre instead of a person.
AI helps students with language barriers. For students writing in an additional language, AI tools for grammar checking, clarification, and translation work as a real accommodation. The same tool that flattens one writer's voice helps another writer enter academic genres she is still learning. Both facts hold. A good AI policy acknowledges both.
Instructors working with multilingual students should read the WITH/FOR framework alongside Elective 4: Inclusive Practices for Multilingual Writers, which treats these questions at greater length, including the code-meshing vs. code-switching debate and the minimal marking principle.
WITH and FOR: The Same Task Twice
Complete one writing task twice with the same AI tool, once in a WITH mode and once in a FOR mode. Then compare how your own thinking went in each round.
Prompt AI to complete the task. Review the output, make light edits for grammar and flow, and treat the result as your response. Accept the ideas as given.
Use AI as a thinking partner. Brainstorm with it, challenge it, and have it argue against your position. Generate an outline, then depart from it substantially. Write your own response. Let the AI output inform it while the decisions stay yours.
What a complete response does
- Describes decisions you made in the WITH task and the AI did not.
- Names where your thinking stopped in the FOR task.
- Draws one principle for assignment design from the comparison.
Prompts marked * need at least one full sentence each to submit the elective.
Write a Course AI Policy and Redesign One Assignment
A course AI policy is a teaching statement. It tells students what you believe about writing, learning, and AI. It also sets the context in which your assignments make sense. A policy that only lists what is permitted and prohibited leaves most of that work undone.
A good course AI policy names the WITH/FOR distinction, directly or by implication. It ties AI use to the course's learning goals and says what academic integrity means in this course. It also anticipates the equity questions a blanket policy ignores. Write it to students as thinkers who make their own choices.
A statement to appear in your course syllabus
Write a policy for a specific course you teach or will teach. Aim for 150–250 words, long enough to state your teaching values and short enough that students read it.
What a complete response does
- States permitted and prohibited uses of AI and the reason for each.
- Addresses students directly in 150 to 250 words.
- Names the FOR path of least resistance in the original assignment.
- Redesigns the assignment so students make and show their own decisions.
Prompts marked * need at least one full sentence each to submit the elective.
Identify an existing assignment and redesign it for WITH engagement
Choose an assignment from the same course. Work out how a student would complete it in a FOR mode. Then redesign it so that WITH engagement becomes possible and visible.
Evaluate an AI-Generated Response Scenario
Read the scenario below and respond to the questions. There is no required length. Write until you have said what you think.
The Revised Draft
A first-year composition student submits a 1,200-word argumentative essay. You notice the prose is unusually polished for this student's previous work: confident transitions, varied sentence rhythm, strong claim structure. You run the text through an AI detection tool and receive a result of 78% "likely AI-generated." The student, when asked, says: "I used ChatGPT to help me brainstorm and organize my ideas, and then I rewrote everything in my own words. I thought that was okay. You didn't say we couldn't."
What a complete response does
- Says whether your policy covers the scenario, and what you would add.
- Names what detection tools measure and what they miss.
- States the goal of your response to the student.
The program maintains a unified AI literacy resource for instructors working through these questions across writing, oral, and digital communication contexts. It covers assignment design, policy language, equity implications, and changes in the AI tools available in academic settings.
Build Your AI in Writing Artifact
Gather the main deliverables from this elective into one artifact for review: your WITH/FOR analysis, your course AI policy, and your redesigned assignment. The artifact goes into your Written Communication Instruction Certificate completion portfolio.
Where you will use this work
Four questions about this elective
Your answers here go to CWSP without your name or email, apart from your elective responses. CWSP reads them to revise the elective. They are optional, and they send when you submit.
When you have completed this elective, submit your responses to the C²TC record. Submission captures all saved fields.