Teaching Writing in College

Now that we've covered the skill I was hoping to develop with my students (a basic knowledge of inductive reasoning) and several lesson plans that could help them develop that skill, in this episode I share the lesson plan I used to have them use AI as they write a summary of a piece of research that they would present in their project. This lesson plan is not only about prompting AI to make a sum...

In this next installment of the Back to Class Reflection Series, I walk through the lesson plan I used to show students what inductive reasoning might look like in writing. The lesson plan includes further modeling of inductive reasoning built on previous work with students. The main activity is to have students copy, by hand, a sample summary that I wrote, complete with color coding for introduci...

In this follow-up to episode 41, I share the second lesson plan I used (in which I prepare students to find a piece of research to report on). At the same time, having stumbled across Jay Caspian Kang's "The Despair of the Professor in the Age of AI" in the New Yorker (May 26, 2026), I've been reflecting on the "despair" that professors face in higher education these days. After sharing a few deta...

Teaching Writing in College is available:YouTube Playlist (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9...

In upcoming episodes, I want to dive into how I taught inductive reasoning as a writing strategy. But for Episode 40, it's worth taking the time to reflect on how it became part of my repertoire in writing courses in the first place. In short, inductive reasoning can be used in the service of invention, and I first learned about it in the same way many writing teachers learn about writing strategi...

Episode 39 of Teaching Writing in College reflects on the big picture when it comes to assessment. For the most part, we live in a system of education that emphasizes external motivation. Although we value things like the writing process, we often reward the end result, or the product with the larger portion of credit. That, of course, subverts any motivation to work on the small things--the day-t...

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education focused on the frustration faculty have been experiencing for the last few years--since genAI became widely accessible a few years ago. For some, that frustration has become the impetus for early retirement. Although I understand and sometimes share that frustration, I also see plenty to look forward to for my students and me in the context of...

As I reflect on my teaching from last year what I'd like to do this year, I'm launching a series that dissects several lesson plans I used on writing skill: inductive reasoning in cause and effect. The lesson plans led up to a passage students wrote with AI, and they incorporate a lot of teaching knowledge and skills I have historically relied on. But at the same time, of course, I've had to make...

For episode 36, I share a helpful acronym from Richard Fulkerson called the STAR criteria. STAR can prompt learners (or all of us) to ask: is my support sufficient, typical, accurate, and relevant? STAR can also be helpful for writing transfer. While I've used the STAR criteria to help students make decisions about support or evidence they might use in an essay, Substack, report or any other writt...

Questions about whether and how AI is used in writing and other communication seem to be an important part of the writer/audience relationship. In this episode, I walk through my effort to include transparency as a form of knowledge about writing. With transparency as a frame, this semester I have shared two strategies with my students that can help them be transparent in their use of AI.Teaching...

In episode 34, I consider another way of looking at my success with AI in the classroom: through assessment. To my mind, AI has imposed a great deal of guesswork into assessment of student writing: "Did my student write this, or was it written by AI?" Since AI is here to stay as part of just about anyone's writing ecosystem, it's important to focus on what really matters: "Is writing being written...

In this episode, I share a short lesson plan I used to begin a conversation with students about AI on the first day of classes. I showed them an AI-generated ad that stirred some controversy, we had a brief discussion regarding students' judgments about the ethics of AI use, and then I also introduced some of my own. I hope you find this short(er) episode helpful!

In this long overdue episode, I'm excited to share my own recent classroom success. After coaching and encouragement on my part, notetaking on my students' part, and then asking students to pull their laptops out periodically for several drafting sessions for their rhetorical analysis papers, the result was very little AI use. On this episode, I'll talk through how I feel I know and how I went abo...

After my first week of teaching this semester, it's time for a report. I promised to share my AI policy, which will be first up in this episode. I'll also share my classroom "coaching" report. Earlier this summer, I discussed the possibility of adapting the way in which my favorite workout trainers try to motivate me to stay focused for the duration of my workouts. Did I do a good job during the f...

Electronic technologies have been embedded in classrooms for decades, but the emergence of genAI has prompted some professors to resort back to handwritten assessments, such as bluebooks and notes. The concern, of course, is cognitive offloading--that an overreliance on genAI for learning tasks short-circuits the learning process by taking away opportunities for cognitive processing.  In this...

As a follow up to episode 28, I made a plan to introduce reflection about genAI on my first day of classes. I start by reviewing a post I encountered on social media that got me thinking in more detail about asking students to reflect on genAI. From there, I present the new lesson plan and then offer several more ideas for learning about genAI as the semester progresses. And, let's face it: I'll b...

As my start date for fall semester draws nearer, I've started thinking in more detail about the kinds of knowledge students need to help them with writing. The distinction Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle made in 2007 concerning the need to *learn about* writing--as opposed to *learning to write*--has resonated with me for a long time. And now, I'd argue that the same idea applies to AI--it's not t...

In this continuation of reflection on my teaching, I present (briefly) the basic routine I use for developing lesson plans: review, launch, deliver, apply, and close (RLDAC). From there, I share two full lesson plans that I described in episode 26: one that I have traditionally used to introduce learners to the rhetorical concept of presence from Chaim Perelman, and the other an adjusted version t...

As a follow-up to episode 25, I outline changes to one of my existing lesson plans to keep student learning focused on the rhetorical strategy of presence. This episode includes a brief rehearsal about how context is central to writing, a brief anecdote of successful teaching with the rhetorical concept of presence, and a before/after explanation of how I plan to adapt an existing lesson plan to s...

Parsing the differences between writing from genAI and writing from people can be frustrating or intimidating. But it can also be fruitful for thinking about how humans and machines handle (or don't handle) context. In this episode, I use the rhetorical concept of "presence" from Chaim Perelman to compare a piece of my own writing to a piece from ChatGPT. This comparison helps highlight different...

In this first episode of my summer reflection series, I explore the need for both learners and teachers to position themselves as "accomplished novices"--people who are not complete novices, but also who are not absolute experts. In the space between those two extremes, one can develop a fruitful mindset for learning by acknowledging and valuing prior knowledge and experiences while also recognizi...

Teaching Writing in College is now available on Spotify! (Please see below.)Episode 23 is a continuation of a discussion in Episode 21 about what I call the "Penny Principle"--a name I have given to a method for learning (and teaching) source citations that I derived from Nickerson and Adams' 1979 study in the journal Cognitive Science. In this episode, I walk through a few lesson plans I've used...

In this long overdue episode, I offer thoughts in response to a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education called "In the Age of AI, Is Education Just an Illusion?" In the article, author Dan Sarofian-Butin compares the current state of teaching in higher education to the concept of kayfabe in the world of pro wrestling, in which fans and wrestlers alike pretend that it's real but know...

Earlier this week, I came across a discussion on Facebook that questioned assumptions about citing sources--especially in an academic way. Importantly, a lot of students who take our classes might not cite sources in an academic setting once they leave college, so why all the (sometimes intense) emphasis on academic formats like MLA or APA? This episode introduces a skill I call "The Penny Princip...

For a while now, I've thought of metacognition as something that can and should be taught as a skill. (I was reminded of this by a podcast episode from The Happiness Lab.) In this episode, I share a reflective exercise based on some of the 8 subcomponents of metacognition that were developed by Gwen Gorzelsky, Dana Lynn Driscoll, Joe Paszek, Ed Jones, and Carol Hayes in Chris Anson and Jessie Moor...