In this Q&A, BYU English professor Meridith Reed shares how educators can still teach students how to write well while navigating the impact of AI.
AI is upending the classroom, and educators are trying to keep up. Institutions are responding in a variety of ways, from complete bans to nuanced policies. Writing teachers face particular challenges as assignments can now be easily generated by AI, along with AI-cheating technology that mimics human pacing and errors. These unprecedented challenges are emerging alongside a cultural anxiety that America has already entered a post-literate era.
Reed and her BYU English colleague, Amber Jensen, have some optimistic advice on how to keep the human brain thriving in the Age of AI. In a recent article published in The Utah English Journal, they outline principles and strategies to help educators at all levels encourage writing processes right alongside AI.
In the following Q&A, University Communications writer Sharman Gill asks Reed, who also serves as the coordinator for University Writing, about teaching and learning in the Age of AI.
Q: How can teachers emphasize the human elements of writing in an AI-infused world?
A: For decades, my field of writing studies has emphasized process over product. AI can produce polished writing products, but it cannot replace the ways a traditional writing process sharpens students’ thinking and stretches their intellectual muscles. We favor a character- and process-based approach to learning to write. We teach students the virtues that distinguish effective and ethical writers, such as humility, curiosity, intellectual honesty and charity.
I want students to take ownership of their learning and recognize that they can make meaningful, moral choices that machines cannot. Morally grounded habits of mind can also help students navigate when and how to use AI in their writing process, if they choose to use it.
Q: What is an effective policy for AI use in the writing classroom?
A: When it comes to managing AI, my instinct is to avoid being punitive and instead work closely with the students to build trust. I have tried surveillance tools and, while they can sometimes be helpful for learning or opening a conversation with students, they do not prevent cheating and cannot accurately identify when a paper has been composed with AI or not. They also cause a lot of student anxiety.
Pedagogically, I have returned to more analog ways of learning. I ask students to take notes by hand, read on paper rather than screens, bring their books to class, and prepare to talk about ideas together. I try to get to know my students and their writing. I focus on engaging students with meaningful and flexible assignments so the temptation to outsource their learning to AI becomes less appealing.
Q: Do you think teachers should disclose their own use of AI?
A: Absolutely. I don’t think we should hold students to standards we aren’t willing to meet ourselves. If I want students to be transparent about their AI use, I have to be transparent about my own use. I tell my students exactly when and how I have used AI in creating any teaching materials. My commitment to transparency has made me more accountable and more thoughtful about how I use AI. I find I rarely need or want to use AI in creating slides, lesson plans, or assignments because creating these materials without AI requires me to be more intentional as I design learning experiences for students.
Q: Given the unknown communication contexts that students will face, what is your advice for preparing students to be confident in their writing futures?
A: Students come to college knowing some genres well, like social media posts. I teach them to generalize that knowledge to identify the rhetorical concepts common to all communication genres, like rhetor, purpose, audience, and context.
My goal is to help students understand how writing works and why it matters. One of the assignments for my first-year class asks students to interview someone about why writing matters in that person’s life. As a result of this assignment, students begin to see how the ability to write is significant across a lifetime, personally, spiritually, professionally, and otherwise. My hope for younger writers is that they will care about writing and see it as something they can continue to develop throughout their lives.
Q: We don’t yet understand how the human brain is changing in the Age of AI. Can students experience intellectual growth while writing with AI?
A: We can use AI in ways that do not replace thinking. I give students the option to use AI with a research paper, but I require them to be transparent and reflective about how they use it. I have seen students use AI to better grasp disciplinary-specific scholarly conversations or diverse perspectives on a question — tasks that are often difficult for younger writers. In my classes, we’ve also integrated more opportunities for students to orally communicate their intellectual growth when they have used AI to learn something.
Students learn to consider when AI can be helpful versus unethical or hurtful. For example, most students come to recognize that while AI might be a helpful way to identify patterns or trends in research, it can’t recreate or replace the authenticity and intimacy of human-generated journaling, eulogies, workplace feedback, talks and personal notes.
Students will become smarter users of AI when they know how to write and communicate effectively without AI. Effective writing is part and parcel of effective thinking, and we’ll need students to be thoughtful and ethical thinkers to navigate the world of AI. I’d argue that the advent of AI means we need to care more, not less, about teaching writing, at all levels and in all disciplines.
Q: Elder Gerrit W. Gong, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently shared some guiding principles for using AI. As coordinator of BYU’s University Writing, is there an element of this message that especially resonates with you?
A: Since March 2024, Elder Gong’s public comments on AI have helped me navigate my work as an educator. We based our AI policy for Writing 150 on the principles Elder Gong has shared, including connection, accountability, and transparency. I especially appreciated Elder Gong’s recent University Conference address on evaluating how we use AI as part of education and how we can support human dignity and agency. My students are children of God, and I want them to see writing as a way to commune with God, to understand themselves, to get work done in the world, and to connect with others. I want them to see writing as a human activity worth engaging in, with great personal and spiritual benefit to themselves and those around them.
