Moves & Motives

Background

When I first started teaching college writing in Fall 2018, I had a statement in my syllabus about being a paper-minimal course. After years of this style of teaching, I have done a complete 180. My Fall 2026 first-year writing course, called “Romance & Dating,” is entirely paper-based, and I have a statement in my syllabus about being a technology-minimal course (accommodations notwithstanding, of course). I have spent the summer fine-tuning a writing course that engages in a scaffolded research project that students will complete in blue books during class. This blog serves a space to document and reflect on my trials and triumphs as I engage in this new-to-me-but-actually-old-school pedagogical undertaking.

To state the obvious: I am switching to blue books because I am sick of reading AI essays. But, more importantly, I noticed a huge shift in my students over the past few years: Some students are not only relying on AI to assist them in writing their essays (e.g., finding sources, proofreading, etc.), but they are having AI do their thinking for them. This is particularly true for required writing courses, because these courses tend to be lower on students’ priority lists. In my experience, many college students are losing their ability to think critically, imaginatively, and originally because they are outsourcing their thinking to AI. That’s scary!

No matter how much we preach about the reasons to not use AI, no matter how much we tweak our assignment prompts to avoid AI temptation, students are using it. Not only are some college students relying on AI in unethical ways, but grading suspected AI essays takes so much time. When I was teaching four first-year writing courses in Fall 2024, I spent hours Googling every single source in my students’ research essays to confirm they weren’t hallucinations; if they were, I’d search each source for specific quotations or paraphrases the students used in their essays. I never want to falsely accuse a student of AI use, and finding evidence for such an accusation takes time. I was spending three times as long grading suspected AI essays, and that was a significant chunk of time when I had seventy-four students.

Hence: Back to blue books.

The Assignments

Devising a way to achieve my first-year writing program’s learning outcomes and requirements while only having students write essays in class was tricky. Here’s how I’m developing a scaffolded research sequence for in-class essays:

Rhetorical Analysis: My students’ first essay is a rhetorical analysis. A staple in rhetoricians’ teaching, switching this assignment to writing in-class is simple enough: First, I will teach students rhetorical analysis skills; then, I will have them practice those skills in low-stakes, in-class writing assignments; finally, they will use those skills to analyze a predetermined artifact in their in-class essays. They even have the option to create a cheat sheet—a piece of paper on which they can write any notes they desire the class period before the essay. I don’t want them to take the cheat sheet home and ask AI what to write on it, so I will keep the cheat sheets between classes. That might seem like overkill, but that’s where I’m at.

Synthesis Essay: Next, we will move on to a literature-review inspired Synthesis Essay. Students will learn how to ask research questions and conduct online scholarly research through in-class tutorials. We will use the course question, How can writing and rhetoric impact romance and dating?, to select three relevant sources as a class. Students will read and annotate the sources by hand outside of class. In class, students will write summaries, key quotations, and source analyses on worksheets; I will, of course, keep these worksheets between classes. Then, students will use those worksheets and notes to write a Synthesis Essay in class, placing the sources in conversation with one another. At no point during the in-class essay will students be writing entirely from memory or entirely from scratch.

Researched Argument: This was, unsurprisingly, the most challenging essay to switch to an in-class writing format. Writing is a process, and revision is an important part of growing as a writer. As such, we will space this essay out over multiple class periods: After learning about written arguments, students will write an outline and thesis statement that answers the course question, drawing from the Synthesis Essay sources and personal experience as evidence; then, I will meet with students one-on-one to discuss their outlines and drafts; next, students will revise their outlines and drafts in class; finally, students will write their essays. Students will do copious in-class writing that they can draw from in their essays. As such, students will move through the process of revision and reflection, developing a somewhat-polished final draft in class.

Final Presentation: The students’ final project is a presentation reflecting on their learning, which will be short and sweet in-class verbal presentations.

Final Pre-Semester Thoughts

As seasoned professors know, my plans will inevitably change. Some things won’t work, some things won’t land, and some things will succeed so beautifully I’ll convince myself this is the best idea I’ve ever had. I fully accept, here and now, that I might have to switch to out-of-class, typed writing. Who knows!

Importantly, I want to acknowledge that AI can be a helpful tool and thinking partner when used ethically. I’m not saying students can never use AI. What I am saying, however, is that students need to learn how to write and think critically before they ask AI to do it for them. Students can, and should, develop AI-based skills over their course of study—it just won’t be in my class (save, of course, for a writing program-required AI activity).

Ultimately, I am fearful that AI will lead to a decline in critical thinking skills—which is a trend I’ve been witnessing for some time now. As a teacher-scholar, I am passionate about teaching students critical thinking skills so they can be active, ethical members of their community. This semester, I will try to teach my students rhetorical, critical thinking skills without AI. We’ll see how it goes!