Fall 2023 First Year Writing Workshop

The Fall 2023 First Year Writing Workshop returned to its pre-COVID format, with part of the workshop having program announcements and group discussion, and part of the workshop being WP faculty-led presentations. Here’s a recap.

Welcome New Members

The Writing Program welcomes new faculty: Dr. Christa Tiernan, Dylan Wells, Thomas Gustafson, and Alexander Gonzalez. 

Response Rates for Student Evaluations

We are repeatedly asked to try to increase our response rates for student evaluations. But it’s a challenge, commonly recognized across departments.  A few faculty shared ways they’ve been able to get better response rates. Some ideas from the group included:

  • Give class time for evaluations on a day you know most students will attend
  • Speak to the importance of these evaluations, as they are students’ opportunity to give feedback to the university
  • Remind students (even citing preliminary response rate reports we receive) that students still need to fill out the survey (“I got an email that only 40% of you have completed the evaluation…”)
  • Invite evaluation throughout the semester (for example, allow students to anonymously give feedback on early units or papers), which gets them primed to fill out formal evaluations later.

Group Discussion on AI

Faculty were invited to share “reports from the field” on what they are seeing with AI and academic dishonesty. Here is a summary of points brought up during group discussion.

  • Some faculty are still seeing “plenty” of standard plagiarism from students who don’t do the reading. AI is just another challenge.
  • Detecting plagiarism is in itself already a lot of much work, and having to document evidence takes a lot of time.
  • Faculty would like some kind of guideline for how to “recognize” AI.  Some suggested that you know it’s AI when you can see great sentences, but there is no thinking, no “there there.” But that’s also a little vague. What are some other hallmarks? One obvious one is disconnected content not related to prompt. But faculty would like more indicators.
  • How to discourage AI? (What the group is trying):
    • Quick-writes in class for a point of comparison.
    • Trying to emphasize pride in ownership, authorship, uniqueness of the ideas, the necessity to develop writing skills.
    • Pointing out flaws of AI-generated content
    • Talking about faculty expertise in assessing writing, and how writing teachers can tell the difference.
  • The group was very curious to know exactly how students are using AI in general? outside of school? for other classes? Would it be a good idea to actually to ask students to share how they are using it? Discuss how it can be useful to them, and where it’s not?
  • At other schools (where some of our faculty teach), AI has been described as the new “milestone” or “affordance” for writing, as the calculator once was for math. However, writing teachers and English faculty are typically the ones in the room who don’t share this sentiment (whereas other fields can seem fine with it). 
  • Some incorporate AI into their teaching to show students what it can do, even having students use it to respond to a class prompt. Some use this as an opportunity to show students what it can and cannot do. A similar approach is to invite students to use AI for rhetorically non-complex tasks, and then compare how it fails at more rhetorically complex tasks.

Faculty Presentations

Kyle Hetrick

Professor Kyle Hetrick presented a strategy he uses in class to engage students: introducing controversies that are “close to home” and students’ experiences on campus. In Professor Hetrick’s approach to FYW, these readings can inspire participation, and get students thinking about complex, sensitive topics (for the example article that Hetrick has his students read, see here).  The benefits of bringing a politically charged controversy into class are obvious–with some careful guidance, you can have lively, engaged participation.  However, the challenge is the need to maintain respectful civic discourse in class. With this in mind, Professor Hetrick shared how he frames student conversations around political and sensitive controversies, including advisory language in his syllabus. 

Tim Randell

Professor Tim Randell gave a talk titled “Envoys to Themselves; Metacognitive Assignments and Final Portfolios.” (You can access his presentation here.) Professor Randell discussed metacognitive writing that “involves self-awareness, reflection, and critical thinking about the writing process,” and demonstrated how he incorporates metacognitive writing assignments throughout the semester. One approach he uses is a rhetorical precis, which “can be used to reflect on the rhetorical context and… purpose in the writing situation.” Another example of metacognitive writing Professor Randell assigns is the self-assessment letter students turn in with their portfolio at the end of the semester. In this letter, students reflect on their writing process and development, but also, point to their own writing (in portfolio items) as evidence of progress.

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