Writing Thoughtfully with AI

Written by Victoria Surtees.

In the most recent session of Chat-Internationalization on Jan.22, UFV Faculty and staff came together virtually to explore a new resource that provides detailed activities for supporting student writing, research, time management, and critical thinking with GenAI tools. It’s called Writing Thoughtfully with AI, and it was developed by two colleagues at Kwantlen Polytechnic University: Jovita Vytasek and Christina Page.

The framework is underpinned by self-regulation theory (Winne & Hadwin, 1998), which refers to the skills students need to become self-motivated and strategic in their university work. We were lucky enough to have Jovita herself join us to explain the motivation behind the work and to give us tips on the best way to use the activities.

Exploring the activities sparked ideas for using AI in class in small groups – as tool to create fair and realistic work plans for group projects, for example. For some participants, it also gave them an expanded sense of how they might use AI to critically examine their own assignments. For others, it raised red flags around AI over-use and the importance of critically evaluating GenAI output.

For me, I see the activities as one way to level the playing field for students who use English as an additional language or who have experienced primarily memorization and exam-based education. GenAI can give them a way to explore assignments, research, and rubrics interactively, and we know that interacting actively we content supports deep learning.

As always, the key to getting the benefits from these activities is not in the tool itself, but in how you use it. Here are a few of the tips I took away from our session:

Discuss and analyze output: Include intentional discussion or analysis of the AI output in whatever activity you create.

Try it live/in class in groups or pairs: Much of the power of AI activities is in the interaction they can generate – doing it in class ensures max interaction and a fulsome discussion/analysis phase.

Challenge students to get creative: Try a fun contest – which student group can use AI to generate the most usable work plan? What about the best list of pros and cons? Or the best assignment outline? Or the worst possible reflection paper?! This will work on students’ prompting skills and force them to critically evaluate output.

Do it more than once: It takes students time to adapt to new ways of learning (and instructors to new ways of teaching!), so be sure to give them at least 2 or 3 opportunities to use AI.

Interested in integrating some GenAI activities in your course?

Contact a TLC Learning Specialist!

Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 277–304). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.