The Transformers: Imagining the Future of the Teaching of Writing

AI has come barging into all of our lives, a great “disruptor” from the Valley where such behavior is valorized and attracts piles of venture capital from bubble-expanding gamblers. Suddenly, the netizens of Earth have been forced to contend with this new technology, and everyone on the planet must accommodate its gluttonous resource consumption. At colleges and universities, the technology threatens to unseat long-tenured educational standards, like the essay. Priceless lessons in critical thinking, writing processes, and even analytical reading have been rendered powerless with the magic button of generative AI.  Who can respond?

Meet the Transformers, a group dedicated to exploring responses to generative AI in higher education. We come from California to Egypt and parts in between. We come from the classroom, from writing program administration, and from faculty technology innovation support. We are neither AI enthusiasts nor AI rejecters. Or perhaps at times we are both and everything in-between depending on how our conversations unfold. We take our name from the very technology that caused this dramatic shift as we acknowledge that just as technology comes from human innovation, so must its responsible and critical use and regulation.

In this moment when texts are easily generated, we lean into conversation as a very human form of thinking or thinking together. As the Transformers, we have set out on a journey of regularly scheduled discussions dedicated to exploring questions regarding AI in education, specifically in the teaching of writing. Our home, as the Transformers, can be found here.

We are delighted to share in the electronic book review our first outing in a conversation around two bookends written by group member Jon Ippolito. The first provocation reflects on Writing as a Proxy for Thinking.  The second, inspired by our group discussion of that piece, reflects on the notion of Friction with Does Education Really Require the F-Word. We offer these then in sequence: a provocation, a discussion, a second provocation, and a second discussion. We invite your response as you join these transformative conversations.