“Small Steps and Scenarios”
The LU Writing Center best supports college writers by helping them discover they have ideas worth contributing and authorial voices that should be stretched and celebrated. To that end, we understand the potentially destructive impact of AI and LLMs on free, original, and imaginative thought and ideation; however, we also have an emerging understanding of the ubiquity of AI tools and their potential for making college writing a more democratic and efficient discipline. We find ourselves aligned with the following well-articulated perspective:
“Chat bots and other large language model AI tools must not be allowed to substitute for the human ability to engage in genuine critical thinking, to consider ethical consequences, to examine topics from multiple perspectives based on the many intersectional identities we inhabit. Therefore, we are committed to encouraging students to invest energy in developing the abilities they need to approach ideas and evidence from a specifically human, individual, embodied perspective—the abilities we need to communicate effectively across difference and better understand ourselves and our world.” –From the AI position statement of the Department of English at UN-Lincoln
We Are a Multimodal Multiliteracy Center: Writing is More Than Writing
We are an academic support space designed to create more skilled, confident, and successful college writers. That is our practical mission, but it involves ideological aspects. As they work with LU clients, our writing coaches deal with “writing that is more than writing.” Their roles call them to:
- Coach critical and analytical thinking across disciplines
- Engage and support the learning of multiple literacies, including cultural, social, technological, linguistic, and disciplinary
- Holistically support writers and their identities in a sustainable sanctuary space, fostering inclusivity, accessibility, and wellbeing for all LU community members
- Coach “studenting” (navigating relations with professors, seeking out resources on campus, demystifying academic culture, etc.)
- Introduce a range of writing-adjacent tools (library databases, translation applications, citation management tools, etc.) – and LLMs are the newest of these
Potential Benefits of Learning to Leverage AI/LLM
We want to support not only students, but also LU faculty who are educating students about ethical ways to utilize AI tools in their writing and research processes. We see some potential benefits as:
- Mitigating impacts of college unreadiness (lack of mechanical skill, lack of vocabulary)
- Support for neurodiverse writers (leveraging LLMs for ADHD, dyslexic writers)
- Turbocharging typical outcomes for expansion of ideas, organization, coherence, and clarity
- Utilization for research efficacy, validity, ethical compliance
- Support for editing, peer review, publication
What We’re Doing Now
Boots-on-the-ground, the LU Writing Center has added questions about AI use to our intake form, filled out prior to each writing center session. We want students to know it is safe to talk about AI here; this will foster conversations we hope to have about ethical and effective use. Also, we are training our staff of writing coaches regarding:
- Ethical concerns/academic integrity/boundaries of plagiarism
- Prompt engineering/assignment modeling
- LLM content scraping (which replicates status quo or amplifies inequalities)
- AI detection tools (and their faults and biases against non-native English writers)
“Some disciplinary associations, including CCCC, MLA, and AWAC, have formed task forces on AI, posted working papers, or issued position statements (nothing yet from IWCA). Some writing centers have started creating materials to guide tutors. And all of us will be mulling over how to handle AI as we plan for the coming year” (Deans et al., 2023, para. 2).
We in the LU Writing Center see ourselves as allies of all campus stakeholders, and this allyship requires us to be open to numerous perspectives, priorities, and concerns. We are making daily efforts to expand our knowledge of AI tool development and a rapidly expanding body of evidence to help us all be the most impactful writers, researchers, scholars, teachers, and leaders we can be.
References
Deans, T., Praver, N., & Solod, A. (2023, August 1). AI in the writing center: Small steps and scenarios. Another Word from the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/ai-wc/
Department of English. (2024, April 10). AI position statement. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. https://www.unl.edu/english/ai-position-statement