The Elephant in the Agora: Refocusing writing instruction on the liberal arts and AI

This presentation will discuss how I, as an instructor, have attempted to reimagine my advanced composition courses in the age of AI. This semester I have pulled the Liberal Arts approach into the foreground while using tools like LLMs to build toward a research paper. I will share some assignments and some reflections on how it worked and what I would do differently in the next course. The presentation will also include a student speaker and his reflections on the approach.

Attendees will take away from this presentation practical ideas about how to:

• Cultivate a liberal arts approach among students
• Use AI tools teaching students how to maintain a critical eye on the tool and what is generated
• Spur students to engage in deep reflection on searching, sourcing, and why we do research
• Prompt instructors to interrogate their own evolving ideas of learning, knowledge, and wisdom in the age of AI
• Minimize the effect of AI-generated “content” being handed in as original work