For most students, the topic of AI seems a bit taboo. As a consultant and an undergraduate student, I experience student wariness while also seeing Generative AI (GenAI) as an intriguing tool for writing center work. Although I may be biased as an English major, I had always viewed GenAI as a tool students used to completely write an essay or assignment for them. However, GenAI has many uses outside of the label of “homework-doer.”
As I have learned through being a consultant, the most important value we pride ourselves on at the writing center is being able to assist students through their writing process. As AI emerged as a supposed “threat” to student writing, we as a writing center had to decide how to approach a technology that had become part of many students’ writing processes. While this technology seemed to sneak up on us, as we move forward into the technological future seeing this kind of technology as the enemy can only hinder possibilities for the writing process.
In several Writers Workshop staff meetings, we’ve developed a philosophy of working with GenAI. Core components of that philosophy include understanding GenAI within the local context of U of I and instructors’ class policies, encouraging students to use GenAI in ways that complement rather than overtake the writing process, maintaining the integrity of a writer’s voice, raising consciousness about use in different writing stages, and taking a nuanced approach when recommending or modelling GenAI writing technologies. Our meetings emphasize ethical and critical use of GenAI, whether it’s being used to help brainstorm and generate ideas or suggest edits to proofread and polish a document. In April, Dr. Wisniewski and Antonio Hamilton (Writers Workshop Assistant Director and Writing Studies PhD candidate) discussed our center’s approach to staff development and student education at the annual Big 10 Writing Center Directors’ Meeting.
At the Writers Workshop, we aim to be a place where students with all different kinds of backgrounds, languages, and writing processes can speak about their ideas and their methods freely. As AI has become a hot topic in academia, we want to approach the subject with care and understand students’ need for using GenAI. We also don’t forget what sets a human writing assistant apart from GenAI: interaction, individualization, listening, motivational scaffolding, and the ability to empathize over a difficult assignment or a sentence you want to get just right.
By Emma Ortega, English major, Sociology minor, senior (Class of 2025)