Eng. 598U:
Writing With
(and About) AI

About the Course

When generative AI emerged, suddenly and provocatively, in the Fall of 2022, many educators, opinion-writers, and administrators decried (or embraced) how AI upturned long-held college and K-12 practices: the thesis-driven essay, writing tutoring, the research process.  

Others (including the instructor) focused on how large language models and other forms of generative AI might lead to either unemployment or new jobs in white-collar professions, including teaching.

More than two years later, many questions about AI remain in flux, so as a class, we will endeavor to explore these issues. Our goals include:

• Learning about the history of generative AI, the marketing of it, the resistance to it

• Understanding the ethical, labor, and environmental challenges AI poses

• Gaining familiarity with major AI products and exploring how they may help in school and at the workplace for writing, podcasting, research, and artwork

• Study forthcoming research from my and Saurabh Anand's anthology about AI and writing: give the authors feedback from a student perspective!

• Practicing writing skills in a graduate setting, using deep-reading techniques such as a double-entry journal

• Producing deliverables to take back to the workplaces (lesson plans, in-services, employee training materials)

• Teaching the instructor and peers! With so many new AI products now, you may find new ones and wish to share them with us.

The class will be short on lecture and long on hands-on practice with AI. It will feature a lot of collaboration using Google Workspaces Documents as well; students will give presentations and demonstrations as we study this revolutionary technology together.

Graduate-Level Expectations: Add Value to the Class

You will find that I ask you to think critically, keep up with reading in detail, and write weekly. Never tell me or classmates what we just read or saw. You need to add value, as you would on the job. Remember my mantra "If you cannot add value to AI content, you won't have a job soon." As a boss, I'd just hire a machine for $200/month to give me "good enough," formulaic work.

Thus we practice adding value here: You will be asked to speak a lot in group and large-group discussion, contributing to our joint knowledge about a growing technology. This class will ask you to be independent, supple thinkers. Keep that in mind.

NO Texts Required 

I will provide PDFs or links to all readings. Know that studying AI reminds me of drinking from a fire hose. You need to prepare yourself and try to sip from the best sources.

My Teaching Philosophy

Critical thinking and deep reading. Poorly supported claims and poor evidence? Not good. Many of the practices I employ were driven by work such as John Bean's and Dan Melzer's Engaging Ideas. If you are a teacher, you'd do well to own a copy at some point.

I will teach this as a graduate-level class. We'll cover a lot of ground and I'll expect you to keep up. I'll help when you have questions, but I'll ask a lot of you in return.

About The Instructor & Technology

I've worked with classroom technology since the early 1990s, focusing on synchronous-communications tools, coding handbooks before the Internet and after, and learning to design Web pages. I was part of The Epiphany Project, funded by Annenberg CPB, in the mid-1990s; our team focused on helping educators in colleges and universities shape (or lead) the integration of new technologies and best-practices in teaching. Out of this work, with a faculty colleague, I designed "Training for Tough Tutorials," the first interactive digital-video project of its kind, for which I and my partner received a Technology in Education award from UR.

I never use closed systems like BlackBoard. Others outside UR should have access to our work to help them understand this vital topic. As I've long believed, "Information wants to be free," as my fellow cyberlibertarians say at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  So I put my syllabi and all my creative work under Creative-Commons licensing. 

Your grades, of course, will be kept off this site and shared with you privately.

In this century, I wrote about virtual worlds and hypertext, employed collaborative writing projects using Google Workspaces, and began working with generative AI.  My focus there has been writing-center leadership on this issue, including teaching prompt-engineering and adding value to the results of AI partnerships with writers. You can read more about my philosophy of teaching and tech at In a Strange Land, my cyberculture blog.

Me and AI? I am a "wary advocate" of learning about AI, but also I reject Ethan's Mollick's claim in his book Co-Intelligence, that we should "always invite it to the table." Sometimes, yes. Refusal to use AI for some tasks, however, can have merit. We'll find out why soon.

My Time at Richmond

I am a Richmond native, growing up in what is now Carytown. Except for a year teaching English in Spain after my time at UVA and a tech-writing job back in Richmond, then five years at Indiana University, I've always lived here in the metro area. I served as Writing Center Director at UR from the Summer of 1991 until the Fall of 2024, training Writing Consultants as well as teaching courses about the history of Cyberspace, The Space Program, and Science Fiction. In addition to my academic work, I write regularly about sustainable agriculture, mechanical work, writing pedagogy, and the history of technology. I publish an occasional short story (cosmic horror or SF). Some of you may have seen my Words of the Week at my UR blog.

My wife Nancy is a retired K-5 librarian for Henrico Public Schools and runs Beepasture Farms LLC, selling eggs from pasture-raised hens in Goochland County. I'm her farmhand and tractor mechanic. I restore old vehicles, do a lot of DIY work, and stay offline a lot, as I have to look at screens for my teaching, writing, and research.

Reach out with questions to jessid@richmond.edu but note that I do not check UR e-mail on weekends until Sunday evenings. I will check it weekdays when I'm in town.