Summer Institute

2025 Summer Institute: 

AI Writing & Critical Thinking

DESCRIPTION: 

Teachers earn 3 grad credits by participating in professional development for 45 hours (over 9 days) from July 7-18 (in person at NDSU, Fargo ND). 

The Red River Valley Writing Project's Summer Institute offers participants a place to learn, share, and grow--as writers and as teachers of writing. This PD is for anyone who teaches writing (at any level, from K to College, or any subject area. And it is truly transformative…you will grow and emerge as a different teacher and writer, I promise!

Participants will prepare and “demo” a classroom lesson/unit for the group; participants will read and discuss best practices for teaching writing; participants will workshop and complete an educator blog post for the RRVWP network.

This year's institute will focus on maintaining high standards for reading, writing, and critical thinking in the age of Chat-GPT. Whether we want to discourage the use of AI, or promote AI use and fluency, our goal as educators should be the same: to help students make more intentional and informed decisions about how they use language in relation to their audience and purpose as writers. 

Stipend support is pending state funding. Applications due Saturday, May 3. Notification of acceptance by Saturday, May 17.

Interested in the 2025 Summer Institute? 

APPLY HERE!

Teacher Testimonials:

"I loved this opportunity to work with and learn from other educators!"

"Really excellent! I have got familiar with so many innovative ideas. It has opened up new avenues for me to rethink about AI."        

"Demo sessions are really innovative. Group discussions are really helpful. Moreover, the way you organized each session is really excellent."

"The discussions challenged me to think about different aspects of AI. I am realizing it is not a black and white issue, and I will need to work through some of the gray areas to develop my own policy and level of use in the classroom."

"Our book discussions and activities were especially helpful, along with the demos. Actually getting the opportunity to DO the activities - to get practice in prompting, evaluating feedback from AI, and comparing human vs. AI writing was all very helpful!"

"I loved the structure and format of the course. It really created high level thinking activities and a lot of great application to concepts. Definitely love this format."

"Everything seemed organized from the beginning and end of each day which made it easy to follow the learning expectations of this course. This course has been very practical in using AI tools in the classroom for us to learn about the nuances of AI tools."