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Check out how other teachers are using Writing Commons to meet the needs of students in a variety school and workplace contexts. Share assignments, projects, and syllabi. Collaborate with us regarding how to respond strategically and creatively to the exigencies of modern life.

At Writing Commons, we value the intellectual work of teachers, academic inquiry, and academic freedom.

We understand many faculty in the U.S. are required by their institutions to develop their classes in course management systems such as Blackboard or Canvas. And, we recognize there are some advantages to course management tools. However, these systems undermine faculty members’ intellectual property: Faculty may invest significant time developing their courses yet be unable to access them at the end of the semester.

Course management tools facilitate teacher-to-student communication yet stifle teacher-to-teacher communications. They limit teacher’s opportunities to collaborate with others teaching similar courses.

Particularly now, during the exigencies of academia’s pandemic moment with a large-scale shift to online delivery, it’s important to share what we can, to understand how shifting intellectual property policies and practices constrain that sharing, and to work to find ways to subvert the exploitation of, especially, non-tenure track (contingent, adjunct, and graduate student) labor.

Current Courses

  1. Writing with Artificial Intelligence
  2. Research in Professional & Technical Communication
  3. Fake News, an Undergraduate Composition Course
  4. Professional Writing

Archived Courses

The Gates Foundation and Three Composition MOOCS

In 2013, Writing Commons was chosen as the required textbook for three independent MOOCs that were funded by the Gates Foundation.

Courses is

References

Creative Challenges

This illustration depicts an image of a robot holding a baby while an investment banker looks on, his hands full of cash.

Imagine the Digital Future

This assignment constitutes the final creative challenge that students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. The rapid progression of generative artificial intelligence raises profound questions about the future of human creativity, authorship, and the role of writing in learning and knowledge production. Rainie and Anderson (2024) from Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center surveyed and canvassed hundreds of global technology experts to investigate their thoughts on AI and the future of humanity. Their study findings revealed a mix of public trepidation and optimism about AI's consequences: two-thirds of the experts expect negative impacts on personal privacy, over half foresee risks to employment opportunities and the integrity of politics and elections, and 40% fear AI could worsen societal civility. In response to these questions, this challenge asks students to tackle one of the core questions (along with climate change, war, hunger, and social injustice) facing humanity: Will the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) limit human agency? A capstone project, students write an essay that theorizes about the future of human agency and writing in the age of AI.

a deep fake image of Putin speaking at the national mall in DC

Research Deepfakes & Misinformation

This assignment constitutes the seventh of eight creative challenges that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence.  Deepfakes refer to AI-generated synthetic media that manipulate or create convincing visual and audio content of real people. These technologies use deep learning algorithms to produce face swaps, voice cloning, full body puppetry, and text-to-speech synthesis, mirroring ancient sophistry's appeals to emotion and tribal loyalties. In today's knowledge economy, being able to identify deepfakes and other forms of misinformation is a critical AI competency, a basic literacy. Not surprisingly, the MLA CCCC Taskforce on Writing and AI has argued teaching critical AI literacy is crucial for our students and democracy. Thus, this challenges introduces students to research and scholarship on deepfakes, their impact on society, and the importance of understanding and combating misinformation. Students conduct textual research on how AI-generated deepfakes exploit cognitive biases, social dynamics, and information ecosystems. Students critically analyze misinformation, write an annotated bibliography, and create a deepfake or information campaign.  

This illustration shows a digital artist at work using a tablet and stylus, with AI-generated imagery in the background.

Research How AI Constrains & Enhances Your Agency as a Human Being

This assignment constitutes the sixth of eight creative challenges that students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. In response to AI, human agency is a major concern. According to a Pew Research Center study — “The Future of Human Agency” Anderson & Rainie (2022) -- the major question confronting humanity with the rise of AI is, “What is the future of human agency?” Trillions of dollars are pouring intro AI research and development. Sam Altman/OpenAI alone is seeking 7 trillion dollars! Research reports by Anderson Consulting, the Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey suggest a good many jobs will be disappearing in the near future. Thus, this challenge introduces the question of agency -- of whether users of GAI (generative artificial intelligence) tools can be “masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants” (NEH).  For this creative challenge, students experiment with AI tools to develop something novel -- something they couldn't imagine doing without AI, such as writing songs with Suno AI, creating videos with Adobe Express, or manipulating images with Adobe Firefly. After engaging in a qualitative, empirical research experiment to explore the possibilities of a new GAI tool, students reflect how these AI tools enhanced or constrained their creative and cognitive processes.

The image depicts two masked thieves inside what appears to be a bank vault. They are shoveling large stacks of books into burlap sacks instead of the expected cash or gold bars. The thieves are making off with what seems to be a literary score - books and written works representing the valuable data that large language AI models are trained on, often through appropriating copyrighted texts without permission from the rights holders. This image symbolizes the allegations that AI companies have effectively 'robbed' this intellectual property vault of human knowledge to build their language models.

The Future of Writing: Postplagiarism & Hybrid Writing?

This assignment constitutes the fifth of eight creative challenges that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. GAI (generative artificial intelligence) tools are a true conundrum for academics: On the one hand, most GAI tools are fueled by the greatest theft of intellectual property of all time. They challenge academic integrity discourse conventions and empower plagiarism. On the other hand, they expedite research and writing processes. In response to this dilemma, this creative challenge historicizes copyright laws and plagiarism conventions, introduces students to recent copyright controversies, and challenges students to analyze whether society needs to redefine IP (Intellectual Property) standards in response to the ubiquitousness of GAI tools and the move toward hybrid writing -- i.e., writing coauthored by machines and humans. Building on the past creative challenges, this writing assignment maintains the course's focus on the critical AI literacies students need to develop to use AI critically. According to The MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI (2023), we need to foreground these literacies in our classrooms so students don't offshore thinking, research, writing, and design to GAI tools. Students using powerful AI writing tools -- and especially students who aspire to be content creatives/knowledge workers -- need to understand the key intellectual property debates surrounding composing in the age of AI.

an image of a speaker presenting to an audience. in the background the slide says "My widget will cure climate change"

Practice Critical AI Literacies

This assignment constitutes the fourth of eight creative challenges that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. The MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI (2023) defines critical AI literacy as knowledge of "not just how AI models work but also about the risk, rewards, capacities, and complications of AI tools" (see point #8). Thus, this creative challenge introduces "18 Pitfalls in AI Journalism," to help students identify  logical fallacies, methodological errors, and interpretive errors in media "hype" about AI. Please note that this assignment is adapted from Professor Whitney Gregg-Harrison’s (University of Rochester) Critical Media Analysis Project. Thanks, Whitney!

a screenshot of chatbots available at Poe.AI

Build a Custom Chatbot

This assignment constitutes the third of eight creative challenges that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. Chatbots are automated programs designed to engage users in conversation, serving a wide range of purposes from customer service and education to entertainment and personal assistance. With platforms like PoeAI, you can create bots for free without needing extensive technical expertise. Bots can be used for a multitude of purposes. Businesses can build customer service bots, personal trainers can build bots to help people schedule workouts, educators can build bots to help students. In this creative challenge, students research bots linked at or created at PoeAI. Working collaboratively, they use Poe to develop a bot. They reflect on this experiment, questioning whether the possibility to create bots, even commercialize them, suggests that AI tools can provide humans with greater agency over their lives and creative projects.

This is a screenshot of some infographics.

How to Write Successfully with AI: Kairos-Driven Prompts

This creative challenge constitutes the second of eight assignments that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. Rhetoricians, technorhetoricians, and compositionists have developed a nuanced understanding of the creative/writing process, including prewriting, inventing, drafting, collaborating, researching, planning, organizing, designing, rereading, revising, editing, proofreading, sharing or publishing. Scholars, theorists, and practitioners in writing studies have plumbed the depths of intuition, inner speech, and felt sense. CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) identifies "rhetorical knowledge" as "the basis of good writing" (Council of Writing Program Administrators et al., 2011, p. 6). Stylists and usability experts have written volumes on style and the elements of style. And yet, at this early stage of the rise of the machines, "engineering prompts" are typically presented arhetorically and with a focus on invention or production. Often, "engineered prompts" don't frame writing as a process from a rhetorical perspective. They don't emphasize that writers often begin with rhetorical analysis of the rhetorical situation that surrounds the exigency, the call to write. They don't emphasize that writers should begin with careful consideration of the contextual variables that need to be considered to respond with clarity and persuasion to the communication situation -- variables such as the media, information literacy perspectives, research methodologies inscribed by the audience/discourse community/community of practice they are addressing. Thus, this challenge calls for students to adopt the persona, ethos, and diction of a rhetorician and compositionists. Thus, this challenge calls for students to analyze the genre of "prompt engineering" and then to develop a tutorial for writers to help them develop "kairos-driven prompts," which are informed by research and scholarship in writing studies. Rather than using "engineering language," students use the discourse, register and knowledge-base of rhetoricians and compositionists to help writers collaborate effectively with AI.

A dichotomy/contrast image. The left panel shows the devil and the right panel shows an angel

Key Benefits of Writing Without Artificial Intelligence

For teachers, scholars and researchers in writing studies, writing is not merely a means of communication, but a powerful tool for thinking and learning. By engaging in the writing process, writers enhance their understanding of concepts, clarify their thoughts, and develop new insights. Given AI systems generate whole essays in seconds, the writing studies community worries hybrid writing -- writing composed by humans in partnership with machines -- will undermine human agency. They worry these systems will perpetuate inequalities as the LLMs (large learning language models) are based on the writing styles, values, and scholarly conversations of writers in Western, English-speaking countries. This limited representation may lead to a narrow worldview embedded in LLMs, which marginalizes, misrepresents, or flattens the languages, dialects, and cultural nuances of underrepresented groups or artistic expression. They may reinforce gender stereotypes, racial prejudices, or other forms of discrimination when generating text or making predictions. Given this context, this assignment constitutes the first of eight creative challenges that undergraduates complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. Inspired by a writing assignment created by Professor Whitney Gregg-Harrison at the University of Rochester, this assignment asks students to reflect on the benefits they gain by writing independently as opposed to engaging in "hybrid writing" -- i.e., writing performed by humans in collaboration with generative AI tools, such as Chat GPT or Claude.

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