[This week marks the start of the Fall semester, and my 22nd year at Fitchburg State. So as usual, a semester previews blog series to go with it, leading up to a special post on some of my latest scholarly projects!]
Yesterday’s post focused on something consistent across my 21+ years at Fitchburg State that never gets old: new student perspectives on seemingly familiar texts and topics. Today I have to highlight instead something pretty new that’s already old: concerns about student AI use, especially in paper writing. In many ways I try not to worry overly much about this trend, as students looking for short-cuts will always find them, and cheat themselves first and foremost in the process. But when an assignment produces way more than its share of such problematic work, then it’s up to me to reassess—and over the last couple years that’s definitely been the case with the second paper in my FYW I course, where students develop a thesis about one of a handful of short stories we’ve read. So this Fall, I’m keeping the stories—which are some of my favorites and are great texts to have first-year students read and discuss—but significantly revising the assignment, making it focused on developing and reflecting on their own reading process and work with the story of their choice. I’m excited to see how this goes and will reflect on it in the end of semester series for sure!
Next preview tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What’s coming up with y’all?
Leave a Reply