The technology company OpenAI released a generative artificial intelligence program that can create detailed written responses, write essays, poetry, code, and much more, in response to short written prompts. It had been years in the making and had been exposed to over 40 gigabytes of text, webpages, images, and other content. ChatGPT is a large…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

Since writing in the disciplines (WID) is focused on learning how to write formal documents of a professional register, it is important to note that each field or discipline has its own style, structure, and format when it comes to writing, and most composition courses seldom facilitate the transfer of these specialized skills in the classroom.…

This article uses Zak Lancaster's 2016 discovery that academics do not actually write the way "They Say/I Say" says they do to reflect on relations between, on the one hand, facts about academic writing and, on the other, the pedagogical values that underlie and guide those facts--or, put another way, to reflect on how values we may…

For novice and experienced instructors alike, facilitating online discussions can seem like a daunting prospect. Many ask themselves how to do so in an effective and meaningful way that actually adds to the course experience rather than seeming like mere busywork. The MANIC discussion strategy is one that promotes deeper student interaction with…

This article reports on a challenging and effective assignment on thinking in a discipline that the author gave during fall 2006 in his sophomore-level "Critical Reading, Thinking, and Writing" (CRTW) course at Winthrop University. Required of all students, the course follows Writing 101: Composition; and a multi-disciplinary course…

This poetry assignment for college freshmen involved preparing a paper. Reading of an Unterecker essay on poetry, extensive reading in a chosen poet, study of criticism, and organization of the paper are discussed. Excerpts from the results are included. Results are discussed in relation to the appreciation of poetry and composition skills. (AF)

Offers research topics and three class activities designed to explore the implications of sexism while building reading and writing skills. (RL)