Why Learn To Write When Machines Can Write For Us?: a student blog
How do you teach a course focused on professional writing in an age of AI? It’s a question I’ve grappled with leading up to the start of the semester last week. My home unit, the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University has a 3rd year required course that is focused on supporting students with their writing. It’s an important course, but it’s also been necessary to rethink how I teach it. As part of that rethinking, the amazing students in the course agreed to co-write a series of blog posts on what it is like to try to learn to write in an age of AI. We write these posts in class, in small groups, in a short period of time. It is an exercise in not overthinking our work, not relying on machines, and putting our work and ideas out into the world imperfectly. Each week the blogs will address 1-2 core questions and you’ll see we have various lengths and styles (remember, these were crafted in about 1 hour, including editing time!). Week 1 we talked about many things including how to get started on a new writing project and how to find and share your voice and perspective in your work. Our blogs were designed to answer one of two questions:
What are university students worried about, and excited about, as they learn to write professionally in the age of AI?
When AI can produce a polished professional bio in seconds, how do you write one that actually sounds like you?
Please comment and let us know what you think!
POST 1: Some Students Want More AI Regulation At University
SFU says do not use generative AI unless an instructor allows it and all usage must be disclosed. However, we say SFU's policy is inconsistent and vague. This lack of regulation creates conditions for students to develop an overreliance on AI. We posit that post-secondary education is a critical time in one's professional career to develop and build essential workplace skills. Certain types of AI usage, such as entirely generating assignments and essays, negatively affects the ability for students to build critical and creative professional skills, like problem solving, research methods, independent thinking, and teamwork skills.
Certain types of AI usage harms the ability for students to develop professional skills because the brain is a muscle that needs to be trained, AI hinders development of creative and critical thinking skills, and AI is an inherently biased tool.
Research says stimulating the brain increases creativity, adaptability, and the ability to think deeply. Those qualities are linked to having original thoughts. People who use AI are shown to have less stimulus in those parts of the brain. People who don’t are shown to have more brain stimulus in the above areas.. Therefore, using AI less credibly increases brain activity and, as a result, originality.
Research and finding materials skills are undermined by AI having information readily available at a faster process. In professional environments with restricted AI access, lacking crucial skills that were anticipated to develop during post-secondary creates challenges for task completion and career expectations. Critical thinking or opposing ideas are not challenged which fails to teach adaptability and collaborative works; fails to teach cooperation and teamwork. Overreliance on Ai can occur without structured engagement or expectations generate concerns for overuse and reduction of independent thinking practices.
AI is an inherently biased tool because academia is already a colonial and hierarchical institution which AI further amplifies, through giving values to knowledge through statistics. (Knowledge from foreign countries valued less, most models being made in the global north). Popular/commonly cited research is used more but that does not necessarily mean it is the best research to use in every situation, as “less valued” knowledge can provide more evidence toward the topic of discussion. These biases the AI has means that context and knowledge isn’t going to be pushed forward.
Employers value creativity, good judgement, and adaptability which are hindered by overreliance on AI (as shown above). Developing a stronger framework for governing the use of AI is important because it will help students build the skills necessary to succeed in professional settings.
POST 2: Is AI Really Saving Students Time They Use Wisely?
The lives of university students encompass a numerous variety of stressful tasks and activities, which is why many of them use generative AI to write professionally in order to save time and increase efficiency. This may be true, however students do not utilize the time saved by AI effectively. Instead, they spend that time scrolling social media rather than developing key communication and professional networking skills essential to the competitive job market. They are therefore not using their time productively toward advancing their career. Students are also sacrificing the time they originally had to write for their professional profiles and careers. We are concerned because students will not land the jobs they care about and aspire as they are wasting their valuable opportunities generated by the time AI has saved them.
POST 3: If You Let AI Write a Bio For You, You May Lose Yourself
Job seekers increasingly prefer to use AI to produce their professional bios because of its convenience. Although it is accessible and quick to generate responses, it creates unauthentic and generic bios. AI has access to extensive information, but it cannot consciously self-reflect on your values, interests, and skills. You can write a bio that sounds like you by avoiding the generalities that AI mass-produces, for example, “I am a team player, good communicator”. These types of generic statements do not portray a real version of ourselves but rather a shallow and interchangeable script that could apply to many people. It is possible to create bios without the use of AI that stands out through self reflection, emphasizing the connection between personal experiences and field specific needs, and writing to a specific audience.
Reflecting on what is personal to you and your experiences helps the audience know what makes you different. A bio doesn't have to be so work-oriented; at the end of the day, it is a small introduction about yourself to an audience. People are usually multifaceted, with many passions and interests that do not center on work. Including your hobbies and activities that drive you creates a truthful version of who you are as a person. Moreover, you can create a multifaceted biography about yourself when you list your skill sets and correlate them to your previous work history. To fully convey your skills and important aspects of yourself in your bio, it is essential to tap into your passion for the job. By using “I” statements, it allows you to be expressive and focus on experiences that are deeply personal to you. Writing your own biography matters because if you rely on AI too much, you start to lose your own voice and individuality.
