By Percy Mercer — Writing Center Coordinator
October 30, 2023

Artificial Intelligence has wiggled its way into higher education, and it’s here to stay — so we’re giving it a seat at our table. 

Earlier this semester, three of our full-time staff presented at the University of Central Florida’s first annual Teaching and Learning with AI conference, which hosted hundreds of higher education faculty and staff from across the nation coming together to discuss how to best use artificial intelligence to support students on their academic journeys. Lisa Jordan, Hosanna Folmsbee, and I found fantastic company amongst similarly minded individuals who hope to harness the strengths of generative artificial intelligence to not only keep up with technology, but to prompt the students at our institution to raise the bar on what they consider exceptional work. 

What is our solution to skyrocket success while fostering critical thinking and the art of communication? It’s simple: we want to use generative AI as a peer, rather than a professor. 

The presentation we gave, while offering a simple idea, prompted a discussion with our listeners that allowed us to workshop exciting ideas on how to go about curating a well-formed, in-class peer review with AI that allows students to learn from the combination of professor, peer, and AI. Whether it comes in the form of using ChatGPT to correct grammar and take part in brainstorming or harnessing it to create an AI avatar students can have a discussion with, using the AI as assistive technology for students has been — at least in our experience and that of our peers — wildly successful. Opportunities like gamification of classwork through AI have only boosted these positive outcomes, which further supports the idea that embracing generative AI as addition rather than supplementation is the direction we ought to be moving in. 

Realistically, what does this look like? The answer can vary widely depending on teaching style and subject. Writing Specialist Lisa Jordan implements ChatGPT in her workshops by teaching students its weaknesses with critical thinking so that while completing their coursework, they use a mixture of their own critical thinking and AI analysis. Online Writing Specialist Hosanna Folmsbee literally uses ChatGPT as a peer during in-class peer review, where students sit together and discuss each other’s work to see where it can better be improved. I use AI to teach students how to create outlines and show examples of strong argumentative or research essay structure. We use the freely accessible version of ChatGPT so that students are aware of what is available to them, and actively research opportunities to further integrate AI into our work.  

As a Writing Center, our goal is not to create better papers — it’s to create better writers. By implementing ChatGPT and other generative AI into our work, we provide students with visual examples of work they’re expected to conduct, more time to focus on the aspect of critical thinking and development of research, and a peer they can examine and ask questions to better understand the pedagogy they’re taking part in.  

Have thoughts? Want to talk AI? Reach out to me at percy_mercer@daytonastate.edu.