False Dichotomies Are Either the Answer or the Apocalypse

Earlier this week, my colleague and friend Sasha Sidorkin published a post on the AI in Society blog, which he maintains as part of his work as the head of the National Institute on AI in Society at Sac State. 

Sasha and several of my colleagues in the Writing Program are having ongoing conversations about how generative AI will impact the teaching of writing in higher education. 

The major themes of those discussions have been the potential for AI-assisted learning, opportunities for professional development, AI skepticism, and the role of AI in pursuing college-level writing learning outcomes.  

Those conversations have been nuanced and productive. 

So, you can understand why I was disappointed to find that Sasha's blog post presented what I believe is a a false dichotomy rooted in a profound oversimplification of the issue of AI in higher education.  

ChatGPT. (2025). False Dichotomies Illustration [AI-generated image]. OpenAI.

After all, one of the most productive results of my conversations with Sasha is Sac State's participation in the upcoming multi-institutional PAIRR research project. The project received a $1.5 million grant from the California Learning Lab's AI Grant Challenge. The recruitment messaging for the PAIRR project nods to the need for nuance when it states, "Writing instructors deserve professional support, with compensation, to help students learn to navigate AI tools without harming their learning." 

I struggled with how to respond to the blog post until I realized it presented an opportunity to demonstrate the PAIRR process. 

PAIRR stands for Peer & AI Review + Reflection. It is a series of learning activities that have students draft a text, obtain peer feedback, obtain guided AI feedback, reflect on both forms of feedback, and then revise their writing. 

The goals are for students to gain experience with AI tools, improve their AI literacy, and develop an improved appreciation for the role of feedback in the college-level writing process. 

It's pretty dope, and I am excited to roll it out at Sac State this summer. 

So, here's my attempt to run Sasha's blog post through the process. 

First, I provided peer feedback by writing up margin comments on an MS Word version of the blog post. The screenshots below give an idea of what I responded to (follow the link to see all the margin comments). I noted some of the post's strengths because there are several, but I will admit most of my comments focused on the problematic false dichotomy. 

One thing I tell my students about my margin comments is this: They are a conversational - sometimes even confrontational - stream of ideas I have as I read the draft. Writing is a social interaction you have with someone who is not in the room with you. My comments are intended to show a writer how one reader is responding to their text.  

 

I follow those kinds of margin comments with a summative comment that notes what's working and offers suggestions for improving the next draft. 

My Summative Comment

There is a point made late in the post that demonstrates a sophisticated and important take on this issue. When you write about the lack of direction and support at the systemic level, you get at an issue we can grab ahold of and start to address.  

I also like that you achknowledge portions of the writing process that AI has yet to grasp: argument structure, epistemology, stylistic nuance. 

Those are great points, and ones that deserve to be explored in more detail.

Unfortunately, those points are buried inside a flawed argument you tellingly hesitate to make. As you conclude, you suggest that the avatars of this hypothetical debate might both have valid points. I would encourage you to be more explicit about which side of this debate you favor. A clear statement on that might help you to see some of the weaknesses of the argument itself.

The phrasing of the argument shows that you have a clear favorite in Rodrigo - the faculty member who is ready to embrace AI as a tool that allows teachers to speed through some of the "dreck" associated with teaching writing. Rodrigo is presented as the open-minded and solution-oriented player, while Jane is focused only on the negative while looking for ways to prevent progress. You acknowledge that some of her concerns are valid, but present her as a stick in the mud (at best). 

I think the reason you stop short of saying Rodrigo is right and Jane is wrong is rooted in your understanding that Jane has some points worth considering. And that gets at what I think needs to happen in the next draft. You need to move away from the false dichotomy that this draft presents: Full embrace versus Fear and shun. No thoughtful faculty member is engaging this issue in such a black and white way. This issue is much more spectral than that: What levels of caution are merited? What levels of caution will prevent progress? Why should students avoid/adopt AI tools? How will adoption of AI-assisted writing impact the learning process? How will it shift teaching techniques? Those are not "yes/no" questions; they are what, how, why questions that drive conversation and shape professional development.  

I know that won't all fit into one blog post, but it'll be more productive to start the complex discussion rather than shut it down by oversimplifying the whole thing. 

Finally, there's a lot of language in this draft that belittles the views of AI skeptics. It makes them sound like Henny Penny as she screams about the sky falling. You are going to anger a lot of readers because Jane A) uses a lot of terms specific to Composition Studies and B) is gendered female. With those choices, you are alienating A) the folks who teach writing and B) many of the women who read this post. It's not a good look, and it undermines the more thoughtful points you've made. 

 So, that's my feedback. Let's see what Claude has to say. I used the following prompt adapted from MyEssayFeedback's AI Prompt Library:

You are a helpful and supportive writing coach providing support for a blogger working on a problem-posing post. In this post, the blogger will name a problem and then provide ways of understanding the roots of the problem. Help the blogger understand the strengths and weaknesses of their argument and any stylistic issues that may impact reader responses. 

Claude's Feedback

Let's analyze this piece as a problem-posing post about the impact of AI on academic writing and curriculum design. I'll break down the strengths and potential areas for development in the argument.

Strengths of the Argument:

1. Nuanced Perspective: The piece brilliantly avoids a binary view of AI in academia. Instead of presenting a simplistic pro or anti-AI stance, it explores the deeper philosophical differences between Rodrigo and Jane's approaches to education.
2. Systemic Analysis: The author goes beyond individual reactions to examine the broader structural tensions in academic institutions. The line "Technology does not just disrupt skills—it exposes fault lines in our educational ideologies" is particularly powerful.
3. Emotional Complexity: The writing captures the human dimension of technological disruption. Jane's response isn't portrayed as mere resistance, but as a legitimate anxiety about pedagogical integrity.
4. Structural Metaphors: The use of architectural metaphors (curriculum as a "building", learning as an "infrastructure") provides a vivid way of understanding the stakes of technological change.

Potential Areas for Development:

1. Representation: While the piece does an excellent job of presenting two perspectives, it might benefit from exploring a third viewpoint or a more nuanced middle ground.
2. Concrete Solutions: The final paragraph hints at the need for a new system, but doesn't provide even a sketch of what that might look like. This could be an opportunity for more specific problem-posing.

Stylistic Considerations:

1. The prose is elegant and intellectually sophisticated. The author uses varied sentence structures and a literary journalistic style that will likely engage academic and general readers alike.
2. The closing rhetorical questions are particularly effective: "Are we guardians of a process or facilitators of progress? Should we protect the sequence, or adjust the map when shortcuts appear?"

Potential Reader Responses:

1. Academics will likely see themselves in either Rodrigo or Jane, which makes the piece deeply relatable.
2. The balanced tone may help bridge ideological divides rather than deepening them.
3. The piece invites reflection rather than prescribing a singular solution.

Suggested Refinement: Consider adding a brief exploration of what a potential institutional response might look like. How might universities create frameworks that neither completely resist AI nor surrender entirely to it?

The central problem posed here is not just about AI in writing, but about the fundamental nature of educational adaptation. The piece successfully transforms a seemingly technical issue into a profound philosophical question about learning, innovation, and institutional change.*

Conclusion 

I really like that Claude and I see this essay so differently. It provides a lot for an author to reflect on. While we both agree that the conclusion needs to clearly indicate a path forward, we read the "two sides" framing very differently. 

I'm particularly interested in Claude's suggestion that "academics will likely see themselves in either Rodrigo or Jane." My response challenges that feedback, creating an excellent point for reflection.

I expect this kind of response to occur frequently when we use the PAIRR process. It helps demonstrate that two different readings are possible and that both have something to offer a writer looking to revise. 

I look forward to seeing PAIRR at work on my campus next fall. 

*I used Grammarly to help with my own writing, but I did not apply it to the response Claude produced.

Why Sac State Writes

I had the pleasure of meeting many of our incoming students this Saturday at Admitted Students Day on the Sac State campus. 

It was a fun and informative event where we asked students to share their answers to a familiar question:

Why do you write?

A Problematic Arm on the Deep Web's Evil Kraken of Lawlessness

Here's an unexpected opening to a Writing Program Administrator's blog post:

Authoritarians stand to gain the most when educators place political dissidents in the same category as criminals who victimize the innocent and exploit the weak. 

So, it's probably not okay that a popular infographic often used to teach about digital literacy places political dissidents in the same category as illegal porn, drugs, and stolen credit cards. 

I mean, maybe some people might think it acceptable, but I am not one of those people.  

Many of my heroes have been labeled as political dissidents at one time or another: Angela Davis, Václav Havel, Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, Carlos Fonseca, Thomas Sankara, Emma Goldman, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Harriet Tubman, and the list goes on. 

While none of these people were perfect, they all worked and sacrificed to restrain the unjust use of power in the hands of authorities (authorities who deemed themselves completely legitimate). It's a sacrifice I admire above most.

Imagine my surprise then when the infographic popped on-screen during a classroom discussion I was leading on how writing instructors should invite input from other experts when teaching topics such as information literacy.

The students had a good laugh when I stopped dead in my tracks while reading aloud the list of things found in this dangerous part of the deep web. I turned to them and asked, "Is illegal porn really in the same boat as political dissidents?" 

They didn't think so.

The infographic was part of a library tutorial on information literacy that we share with first-year students. When asked about it, our librarians quickly acknowledged that the equivalence was problematic. They agreed to pull the graphic. 

A happy outcome locally, but I was curious about how widespread use of the image was.   

The infographic was originally published in 2014 by CNN Money. It has since found its way onto several different places online. For example, a 2023 post in Writing Commons, instructions for developing college-level library database tutorials, and a university journal that publishes the exceptional work of graduate students. So, it should not be a shock that the image pops up on other university library tutorials or that it became part of our university's tutorial to teach students about researching online.

The subject isn't an easy one to teach, and the infographic does look great. Nearly all of the information on it is informative and accurate. I can understand why people building lessons around this subject would miss the bit about political dissidents being an arm of the evil Kraken of lawlessness. 

But... it is also typically used in a class that focuses on critical reading. So, there is that.

And yeah, there is also probably something to be written about the infographic's origin being a news outlet operated by an international megacorporation that is deeply invested in the current status quo, but I think it better to leave things here: 

Education tools are not perfect. This doesn't make them useless or malevolent, but it does mean that educators and students need to stay sharp and critical when teaching and learning.  

A bit of preamble 

It has been difficult to serve as the Writing Program Coordinator this fall. 

After my first year in the position, the University cut the amount of time set aside for the work in half. I also had to step in unexpectedly to serve as the coordinator of the University Reading and Writing Center. 

So, just as I was finding my feet in the position of Writing Program Coordinator, the ground shifted beneath me quite dramatically. 

While previously serving in faculty-administrative positions, I would spend a year running the program in the same way it had been run before my appointment. Only after gaining that experience would I feel comfortable setting new programmatic goals. The strategy demonstrates respect for the people who ran the program prior to my arrival and it allows for a coherent professional environment during the transition to new leadership. 

So, I was deeply frustrated to learn that my first year of experience would not be informative for the work I am doing this year. I'll adjust and move on, but it is difficult to invest in any form of long-term planning, which is kinda what I thought I was here to do. 

There were some bright spots.

One of the sites where I was able to utilize my professional and scholarly skillset was the graduate-level Composition Pedagogy seminar I led. The students in the course were engaged and intellectually curious. Together we examined the past couple of decades of theory and practice used in composition classrooms while planning our own courses. Here at the end of the semester, I drafted a personal reflection in which I attempted to describe what we learned together. 

I thought I'd share it here. I called it...

 A Really Good First-Year Composition Course

Learning to teach Composition can be a bit tricky for some, because the work involved is not the teaching of writing, even though that’s what everyone thinks we’re doing.

You see, the students we get in the first-year composition classroom can already write. Some better than others, sure, but as high school grads who have elected to go to college, all of our students have experience in spaces where writing has been expected of them. And to meet those expectations, students utilized skills that took years to develop.

First-year composition wouldn’t work as a class if we dismissed the value of those skills. 

So, what we teach in first-year composition is how to reconfigure and develop those skills for a new environment. Writing for college is not better or more difficult than writing in other settings; it’s just different enough that students benefit from a course designed to help them understand the lay of the land: the culture, the values, the goals, and the various ways things get done when writing for college – as one scholar put it, the “ways of knowing and the ways of doing” in an established community.

For new instructors, the bar set for a very basic first-year composition course is a fixed target: Getting students ready to meet a set of expectations associated with college-level writing. 

But in a really good first-year composition course, learning the lay of the land will help students develop a new skill. In that really good first-year composition course, students learn how to learn the lay of the land. That’s the kind of course I ask participants to design in my Composition Pedagogy seminar. 

You see, the process of writing up papers we’ve labeled as “college-level” presents the first-year composition students with an opportunity: Those students can examine how culture, values, and goals shape the various ways writing gets done in college. Students who perform that examination can learn how to perform a similar examination in other settings where new kinds of writing are expected of them.

What makes that a really good composition course is a poorly guarded secret that people who teach composition have known about for a few decades: The lay of the land keeps changing as we travel. 

I know it sounds like an inspirational meme caption, but travel and mapping are super effective analogs for learning and teaching. Effective writing is not a static target. It is a series of destinations.

Students start the college journey with intro courses or general education requirements. First-year composition should prepare students for most of the writing done in those settings, but even in the first couple of years, the types of assignments are different from one course to the next. The personal narrative in first-year composition doesn’t show students how to write up the lab for Intro to Geology. The road is already bumpy, but the trip is just getting started. When students start moving into their major, the types of assignments become more specific to the area of study. Research papers in Marketing don’t look at all like research papers in History, and the lab reports in Biology are different than the lab reports composed in Mechanical Engineering. And these variations in the terrain only become more pronounced after students leave college. 

Students in that really good composition course learn that they must first identify and then meet the expectations of the many different readers they will encounter on their journey. 

Instructors seeking to prepare students for this kind of journey understand this: Undergrads learning to write for college must be resourceful. 

Now, that word is tricky because people often equate “being resourceful” with just being smart. 

Being resourceful, however, is better understood as a problem-solving strategy. Resourceful people seek out and use resources when they are working to solve a problem. 

College students have a particularly messy problem to solve when they set out to write for audiences with new and unfamiliar expectations. 

An example is helpful to close.

Something taught in pretty much every first-year composition course is that college instructors expect students to skillfully incorporate other material into a text – material that often is not assigned as required readings by the instructor. We’re talking about outside sources. To teach this, we have students write papers that require the incorporation of information from outside sources. It’s pretty straightforward. Every composition student gets to practice on two or three papers over the course of a semester. 

In the really good composition course, however, students also pause to examine the writing landscape for any clues that might explain the different expectations across different tasks. Personal experience in a narrative has to be described with a credible amount detail. Expert opinion in an argument needs to be contextualized. Scholarly sources in a lit review get a formal citation style. The students in this course identify resources they can use to discern the why and how behind those differences.

Because the road ahead requires resourcefulness. 

The faculty at my university expects students to find and use countless resources in their writing: statistics, interview transcripts, political speeches, experimental results, infographics, reviews, white papers, critical analyses, case studies, films, technical specifications, instructions, poems, diagrams, and more. Students do not know how to utilize all of those resources in first-year composition. 

So, let’s say we have a senior studying economics who is working to jam the results of a regression analysis into a policy recommendation paper. After using Stata to run the statistical tests on a massive dataset provided by the professor, they must turn to yet another set of resources – mentors or model texts or style handbooks or peers or previously achieved learning outcomes – because not only do they have to understand how to describe what they have found in their research, they also have to sort out how others in the field typically incorporate the results of statistical tests into sentences while still sounding like economists. 

The writing knowledge the student brought to this task must be combined with new writing resources only available in the setting where thinking and learning get done. 

That’s why the discipline of Rhetoric & Composition developed pedagogies that do more than get students ready for college-level writing. Our students are not trying to hit a target; they are preparing for a journey.

Finding the Disciplinary Divide

I took a gamble in a Department Meeting last week, firing a bit of a warning shot across the bow of some who will be teaching first-year composition next year. 

I did this while presenting revised learning outcomes for first-year composition. I was walking everyone through the revision process and sharing the draft outcomes. Pretty standard stuff.

But then I admitted my presentation served the secondary purpose of reminding everyone in the English Department that our composition courses have contemporary learning outcomes that will require contemporary syllabi and lesson planning. 

And I did not veil the suggestion much. I said, "If we have faculty that last learned to teach composition in, like, the 90s or earlier, this new curriculum will require people to significantly update their approach."  

I was talking mostly to the Literature people, and that can be a little dicey in an English Department. 

The shot I took highlights the disciplinary divide between the study of literature and composition, and I was making it clear that expertise in the study of literature is not sufficient to teach composition.  

For those who are not familiar with the evolution of the discipline of Composition Studies, in the 80s and 90s, scholars in the field spent a lot of time and energy demonstrating that studying the acquisition of advanced writing skills is a discipline of its own that is distinct from the study of English literature. 

Since most writing programs were in English Departments, highlighting this disciplinary divide back then came with plenty of fighting over shared resources. This was not, however, a scholarly turf fight. Literature scholars do not see themselves as Composition scholars. What happened was a lengthy process of defining methods and clarifying goals in Composition Studies. 

In the time since, Composition Studies has spent a few decades refining our research methods and applying those to test new approaches to teaching writing. It's been great. I got to go to grad school during that era. My peers and I learned about our field's identity and goals as we simultaneously learned about its methods and theories. 

But outside of grad school, there are writing programs that have to run as parts of colleges and universities where the acceptance of new methods and theories is unevenly distributed across faculty and administrators.

In our program, we have faculty members with MAs in English Literature who have been teaching composition for decades. They have gotten very good at teaching the syllabi they developed twenty years ago. They do not always welcome disciplinary advancements. For example, before I arrived at Sac State, the Writing Program introduced a portfolio assessment requirement for first-year writing. It was a timely reform, maybe even a little ahead of its time back then, but it should not be considered radical today. It's pretty standard stuff. But I am aware of a number of faculty members who have refused to implement the portfolio assessment policy, and we have others who adopted a half-measure that complies with the rule but misses out on all of the teaching benefits. And this is just one example of the kinds of challenges a WPA faces. 

It's an exciting, if somewhat daunting job that I'm just beginning to wrap my head around as I finish the first year.

I'm filling some impressive shoes in this new role. Before I stepped up as program coordinator, Dr. Angela Clark-Oates made antiracist assessment a priority well ahead of the national curve. She also brought in external reviewers from CWPA and made ambitious strides toward a systematic approach to programmatic assessment. Before that, Mona Dobson steadied the ship after some turbulent years that led to major changes in personnel. And prior to that, Dr. Amy Heckathorn modernized the program, managed to get a WAC Coordinator hired, and established a culture of writing that extends well beyond the composition classroom. 

I recognize that continuing their work means not only recognizing all they've done but also establishing a vision of my own that propels the program forward.

And that returns me to the warning shot. 

Yesterday, two of my colleagues stopped me on campus and confronted me about my comments from the Department meeting. They told me they were listening to what I had to say and realized, "Hey, we learned to teach composition in the 90s!"

I was very happy to see these colleagues of mine laughing as they told me this. Dr. Jason Gieger, a Film Studies scholar, and Dr. David Toise, a British Literature scholar, are more than colleagues. They both served as mentors as I've grown into my career here at Sac State, helping me understand how the university works and also how it doesn't work. They've done that with kindness and good humor. So, to see them laughing about my remarks was a relief. They told me a story about a former Sac State professor who, after being assigned a Composition course, sat and listened to the WPA explaining all of the recent advances in the field of Composition. After the reasoning was laid out before him, he said, "Ahh, no thank you. I think I'll do it the old-fashioned way." 

It was a very funny story. By telling me that, my colleagues showed that they understood what I was getting at and that they did not take offense (at least not enough to tell me about it). 

My reminder at the Department meeting that contemporary learning outcomes require a contemporary approach to teaching was not intended as a slight to Literary scholars. It was a nod to all the work done to establish Composition Studies as a discipline in its own right. It was also an acknowledgment that there remains work to do in that area. 

I spent the last several years gathering evidence that there are still many who need to better understand the divide between disciplines. I was serving as the large-scale writing assessment coordinator, and our team assessed writing portfolios. Students selected assignments they've completed for various courses and described those assignments for the portfolio readers. One flawed composition assignment that I saw far too often was "a rhetorical analysis of a work of literature." 

Students are being asked to perform rhetorical analyses of short stories, poems, or novels. The result is almost always a literary analysis that includes a handful of terms from the study of rhetoric. These kinds of assignments are developed by faculty members (likely well-versed in the study of literature) conflating rhetorical analysis and literary analysis. That is the result of someone not fully understanding the disciplinary practices of Rhetoric & Composition. And for the students, unfortunately, these kinds of assignments often further blur the line between the disciplines, making it more difficult to think about writing across different contexts. 

To be clear, you can perform a rhetorical analysis of literature. Some literature clearly has a rhetorical purpose. I had a nice chat today with a grad student about the rhetorical goals Milton had when composing Paradise Lost. And at the grad level, a paper about that would be cool.

Trying to assign a rhetorical purpose to most works of literature, however, is often troublesome. I mean, "How did Yeats work to change the beliefs or behaviors of readers of The Stolen Child" is a deliciously messy question. But that poem is better understood through literary analysis, a practice that does not worry itself with exigence or arguments. 

It is also possible, although rare, to perform a literary analysis of a rhetorical artifact. Yesterday, A.O. Scott did just that with the text message at the center of Tucker Carlson's dismissal from Fox News. It's worth noting that Scott warned against using literary analysis for such purposes in the opening of his piece, but by treating Carlson as a tragic character, his work does demonstrate how a text can inform readers about complex human issues such as internal conflict and the denial of one's own shortcomings. It was pretty neat. 

Such efforts, however, are exceptions performed by people who are being intentional with their cross-disciplinary efforts. They are not appropriate assignments for students who are still trying to understand how scholarly and professional disciplines work. 

This is not a dismissal of such exceptions. They have the potential if used correctly, to help teachers better define the disciplinary divide. I am interested in working with my colleagues to develop lessons or writing prompts to do just that.    

With that in mind, I have started writing grant proposals to seek funding for professional development and mentoring programs aimed at facilitating an in-program effort to define and support best practices at Sac State. I learned a lot this academic year, and I look forward to implementing what I learned as I grow into this WPA role. 

Why (A.)I. Write

These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design.

Claude E. Shannon, "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" - 1949

When I use a chatbot to compose a text, I am using a tool to do some of the work required to pull ideas together into a coherent whole. I do this when I already know what that coherent whole should look like. I might do this for a marketing message, an insurance appeal, or a time off request.

I use it for the kinds of texts that have a clear purpose, one I know before I start writing. These texts also have a pre-established structure (a genre) that the chatbot can imitate effectively enough for a human reader to recognize the "writing moves" the bot is making. 

It takes work to create that text, and if software can do some of the work for me, great. 

Because in such cases, the act of writing isn't going to change the way I think about what I am trying to achieve when I write those routine texts.

But I'm not using a ChatBot to write this text. 

Why not?

Why am I am doing the work required to pull ideas together into a coherent whole without a ChatBot.

It's because I do not yet know what that coherent whole should look like.  

That's why I write. 

This is the writing I want students to learn about in our Writing Program. It is the writing required to solidify ideas, to critique an unfamiliar argument, or to inquire into new research areas. This is writing that helps an author organize ideas for themselves so those ideas can then be used later. 

I learned about teaching this kind of writing when I studied Writing Across the Curriculum, an area that promotes "writing to learn" in classrooms. The not-so-radical idea is when information is new to students and those students want to use that information later, they need to take time to organize that information in their own minds. Writing is one of the most effective tools for such work.

I'm doing it now. I am organizing the information I have about A.I. ChatBots in my mind. I'm trying to identify contradictions in what I've learned. I'm seeking blind spots in my understanding. Every time I go back and re-read my draft, I'm making sure it jives with the other stuff I want to say here, other information I've learned, and my core beliefs about writing and technology. 

This is the mental work required to sort out how I will react professionally to a new disruptive technology.     

It's a ton of work to do in my head, and I am still using plenty of contemporary technology to compose this. I'm writing using a computer and a WYSIWYG blog editor running on my web browser with a Grammarly plugin, providing real-time feedback on my spelling, syntax, and grammar.  

The tools are helping, but they are not doing the important work.

These tools don't even know what I'm trying to do. 

The screenshot of a "free Premium suggestion" from Grammarly demonstrates as much. The tool is asking if I "want to sound more positive" in one of the sentences from this post. It doesn't recognize that I am highlighting one of the things algorithmic text analysis cannot do. Attempting to sound more positive would muddy the message. The bot, however, has been programmed to help writers sound more positive no matter what.

That algorithmic misstep reminds me of something that comes up in a writing workshop I facilitate with Civil Engineering students here at Sac State. We talk about style in experimental reports, specifically the expected use of passive voice: 'measurements were taken' as opposed to 'we took measurements.' And at every workshop, I ask if writing teachers have ever told the students to avoid the passive voice. A few hands go up every time. Because many teachers who work primarily in the Humanities have learned to avoid the passive voice no matter what.  

And you know what? In a lot of settings, those writing teachers are correct. The writing formula they teach works for most students most of the time. It's only a problem when those writing teachers don't know what the engineers are trying to do.

And there it is. There's the idea I've been writing to find.

If our Writing Program is designed to teach students how to meet the writing expectations of already familiar situations, then ChatBots are an existential threat.

If, on the other hand, we are teaching students to write because it is an essential part of the process of creation, critique, and critical engagement, then we can treat ChatBots like a new tool and find a place for it in our classrooms. 

Listening to the Divide

Led a difficult Writing Program meeting last week.

I enjoyed it because the faculty were helpful and engaged, but it was a tough one. 

We discussed our instructor evaluation procedures and how they impact the scheduling process. 

It's just a difficult topic.

There was a division that I noted, and I need to sort out what that division means for a Writing Program Coordinator. 

On one side of the division, we have faculty who see the challenge of teaching in a comprehensive regional university that has recently ended remediation, and they've responded in this way: My task as a professional is to find teaching and assessment practices that support this population of students and their progress toward our learning outcomes.

On the other side of the division, we have faculty who know they are teaching courses with class caps that are too high and students who lack the support they need to meet the demands our learning outcomes present. These faculty members see the situation this way: Too many of these students do not have the resources they need to pass my course, and I am the one who gets unjustly blamed for that. 

I'm gonna admit, as an instructor, I know which side of the divide I stand on. But that doesn't mean shit.

My job is to make sure these sides don't see each other as adversaries. My job is to hear these two sides and determine what kind of support they need. And then to figure out how to provide that support.

I've written about the need to strengthen our school's support system for student writers. The system is there, but it needs help because our required courses are not enough for many of our students. They need to have resources - but more importantly - to use resources outside the classroom to grow as writers. 

I engaged in an interesting (and related) conversation with an instructor shortly after the meeting. This person was concerned (rightfully) about the outsized impact student feedback has on instructor evaluations. One of the problems mentioned was that students create outside chat groups that do not include the instructor via Discord or Slack. A negative leader in such spaces can sour a class in very little time, and there's not much an instructor can do once that occurs. 

And I recognize that issue. We began discussing how to implement solutions.

But then something was said that didn't feel right. The instructor expressed frustration because, they claimed, students using these apps rely on each other for help on assignments rather than asking the instructor.    

See, that shouldn't frustrate anyone. I read that as a huge positive, not just for the students, but also for the instructor. Part of our goal in a Writing Program is to prepare students to write without the support of a composition instructor. We know they will face new writing challenges in their major and in their post-collegiate endeavors. Students who actively seek out support from peers beyond the boundaries of the classroom are demonstrating a kind of resourcefulness that they will need when instructors are no longer there to support them. The fact that they are already doing this is kind of awesome. We should wear that like a badge. 

I don't want composition instructors to believe that they are entirely responsible for the writing development of their students. Students must be able to work with the instructor and all of the other resources present in the community to grow as writers.  

But taking that position isn't easy if students and/or faculty don't believe the resources are available or sufficient. 

So, that divide is informative, no matter what side of it I'm on. I recognize that building up student support, offering more paid professional development, and establishing a lecturer mentoring program are all parts of the mix, but this experience helped me see one other thing I should set my sights on.

I got the idea on Saturday when I went to Avid Reader Books in Sacramento and I got to see Jodi Angel do a reading from her new book, Biggest Little Girl. Jodi is a friend from my days in the UCD fiction writing program, and her reading was stunningly powerful. 

The author who read before Jodi is Josh Fernandez, who read from an upcoming memoir, The Hands that Crafted the Bomb (coming out this winter). Josh is also a composition instructor at Folsom Lake College, and the reading provided an insightful, powerful, humorous, and devastating look at what it means to teach composition today. 

As I listened, I realized I need to listen more. I need to provide a space for voices like Josh's and other composition instructors. 

Our students, our faculty, our administrators, and our community need to know what it means to teach writing in these times. 

So, I have a project. I gotta find some money for prizes and organize a Creative Non-Fiction on Composition Competition (oh, and I gotta ask Josh if he'd be a judge). I think it could be fun. It'll be work - but work well worth it.