Spring 2024 Book Circle:

Each semester, the Teaching with Writing program provides opportunities for small groups of faculty and instructors to address topics of interest through a book study. 

Generative AI platforms entered the academic environment with a tremendous splash. Still, we are only now moving beyond utopian visions of labor-free productivity and dystopian visions of robots eliminating the need for human writers. This semester, colleagues from across disciplines and methodologies are invited to discuss AI and Writing by Sidney I. Dobrin. As former director of the Writing Program at the University of Florida, Dobrin’s career has allowed him to consider writing technologies from the perspectives of students, instructors, and administrators with an eye toward applications and implications for learning and teaching with writing.

The book begins with a non-technical description of generative AI and provides background information on how such technologies have been developed and advanced with computing technology. The remainder of the book considers the potential uses of generative AI for creating text, code, and images and the risks associated with these developments.

The book circle will meet monthly on Thursday mornings (9 a.m.) for the spring semester via Zoom. To accommodate the widest audience, we may adjust dates and times, and alternative sessions may be scheduled to accommodate interested participants. 

Projected semester schedule:

• January 25th: Introduction and Chapters 1–2

• February 15th: Opening chapters continued and Chapter 3 (academic integrity)

• March 21st: Chapters 4–5 (writing with AI and prompt generation)

• April 18th: Chapters 6–8 (visuals, contexts, and career readiness)

• May 16th: Chapters 9-10 (bias and the material costs of AI)

Participants may also recommend changes to scheduled reading, whether to speed up or slow down. Completing the reading for a given session is encouraged but not required. 

A printed version of the book is available from Broadview Press.