Angela M Laflen

As generative artificial intelligence (gAI) tools become increasingly prevalent, writing instructors face challenges in addressing their ethical and pedagogical implications. In response to a rise in unethical gAI usage among students in English 5 at Sacramento State, graduate teaching associates in the English department incorporated AI literacy into their sections of English 5 through a revised rhetorical analysis assignment. This study examines the implementation and impact of this instructional shift during the Fall 2024 semester, when four graduate teaching assistants (TAs) introduced ~100 students to AI literacy through structured rhetorical analysis activities. The assignment sequence included identifying rhetorical moves in scholarly articles, collaboratively constructing a rhetorical moves chart, prompting and analyzing ChatGPT outputs, and composing a comparative rhetorical analysis essay. Findings indicate that explicit AI literacy instruction significantly reduced unethical gAI usage, as reported by TAs who observed declines from 15-25% in Spring 2024 to under 5% in Fall 2024. Students engaged critically with both human-authored and AI-generated texts, recognizing limitations in gAI’s rhetorical sophistication and citation accuracy. Additionally, integrating gAI into coursework fostered a shift from a punitive approach to a collaborative learning environment, allowing students to explore AI’s strengths and weaknesses responsibly. This study underscores the importance of proactive AI literacy education in writing pedagogy, demonstrating how structured engagement with gAI can enhance critical thinking and ethical technology use in academic settings.

There have been few studies examining the variation that exists within modes of feedback: for example, comparing how electronic text feedback created using Google Docs differs from electronic text feedback created using Microsoft Word or how audiovisual feedback created using TechSmith Capture differs from audiovisual feedback created using Screencast-O-Matic. However, the programs that instructors use to create feedback have different affordances, meaning that even within a single mode, the feedback students receive on their writing can vary significantly. To better understand the variation that exists within a single mode, this study investigates how affordances of Canvas Speedgrader, Google Docs, and Turnitin GradeMark impacted electronic text feedback.Based on analysis of 131 feedback files created using the 3 programs, in conjunction with 5 student surveys, and 2 instructor interviews, the study provides insights into how instructor written commentary (location, form, type, focus, and mitigation) varied by program and how participants perceived of feedback provided through the 3 programs. The study...s primary finding is that the affordances of the programs used to create electronic text feedbackresulted in significant differences ininstructorcommentary and instructor and student perceptions of feedback. •Features of electronic text feedback differed depending on the program used to create it.•Program used made a difference to comment location, type, focus, and form.•Participants perceived of feedback differently depending on the program used.•Affordances of the programs associated with convenience were especially valued.

Abstract This article discusses how we have used undergraduate research (UR) to foster habits of mind associated with information literacy (IL). Our strategy is course based and involves students as potential contributors to the Graphic Narrative Database (GND), a digital work in progress. Presenting students with focused parameters for their research and with the prospect of an authentic audience for their writing, the assignment provides students with many opportunities to explore our complex information landscape as practitioners. Students deploy a wide array of strategies to gather and share information about a body of texts that are themselves richly multimodal.

•Eli Review can align well with online writing instruction (OWI).•Eli Review mitigates the drawbacks associated with peer feedback.•Even tools designed for peer feedback do not align with all peer feedback approaches. Eli Review is a web-based platform that was built by composition faculty for the primary purpose of scaffolding online peer feedback activities. Eli supports a very particular feedback strategy characterized by students completing frequent small writing assignments, participating in regular peer reviewing activities, and using the feedback received to generate revision plans. Faculty focus on scaffolding the activities, debriefing the entire class based on the peer feedback, and providing feedback to students on their feedback. In this review, I consider how Eli’s interface and supporting materials reflect theories and assumptions about writing pedagogy and discuss how Eli shapes the feedback that students receive on their writing. I also discuss the possibilities and limitations, particularly in the context of online writing instruction (OWI), of Eli’s approach to feedback.

•Learning Management Systems often make grades visible apart from feedback.•Separating grades from instructor feedback changes the nature of response.•Two response methodologies for grading in Learning Management Systems were compared.•We analyzed data tracking students’ actual behavior in accessing feedback.•Students are less likely to open feedback when grades are visible separately. Instructor response to student writing increasingly takes place within Learning Management Systems (LMSs), which often make grades visible apart from instructor feedback by default. Previous studies indicate that students generally ascribe more value to grades than to instructor feedback, while instructors believe that feedback is most important. This study investigated how students interact with an LMS interface—an instance of Sakai—to access instructor feedback on their writing. Our blind study analyzed data from 334 students in 16 courses at a medium, comprehensive private college to investigate the question: Does the rate at which students open attachments with instructor feedback differ if students can see their grades without opening the attachment? We compared two response methodologies: mode 1 made grades visible apart from feedback, and mode 2 required students to open attached feedback files to find their grades. The data for each mode was collected automatically by the LMS, retrieved, and retrospectively analyzed. The results show that making grades visible separate from feedback significantly reduced the rate at which students opened instructor feedback files and that timing also impacted students’ rate of access. These findings provide the basis for empirically informed best practices for grading and returning papers online.

► We use a model from the field of psycholinguistics to identify linguistic features that writers use to communicate emotion in CMC. ► Students use linguistic features to express emotion. ► Students transmit emotion to one another through linguistic features. ► Students’ unfamiliarity expressing emotion subtly and accurately using linguistic features contributes to the quality of ranting in CMC. Even when instructors take steps to mitigate conflict between students, online discussions are likely to be more emotional than face-to-face discussions, and student posts frequently bear characteristics of ranting. This paper uses a model from the field of psycholinguistics to identify linguistic features that writers use to communicate emotion in CMC to substitute for the nonverbal emotional cues that speakers and listeners rely on in face-to-face conversation. Our analysis of the online forum for a course called Presidential Election Rhetoric illustrates not only that students use linguistic features to express emotion but also that they transmit emotion to one another through the use of these features. Additionally, we suggest that students’ unfamiliarity expressing emotion subtly and accurately using linguistic features contributes to the quality of ranting in CMC. Finally, we recommend specific strategies to help students further hone their skills at expressing and perceiving emotion in CMC.

Throughout her long career, Margaret Atwood has written only two speculative novels, The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. In both, Atwood traces ideas and practices already present in contemporary culture to their logical conclusions, and a comparison of the novels reveals the evolution of Atwood's perspective on a number of recurring topics, visual culture being chief among them. The context for Atwood's evolving concern about visual culture is the rise to dominance of the image in contemporary culture. In the nearly two decades that followed the publication of The Handmaid's Tale, the use of visual culture to aestheticize political and social life accelerated to the point that image and reality became nearly impossible to distinguish. Similarly, the stakes of visual representation are much higher in Oryx and Crake than in The Handmaid's Tale, and Atwood suggests that not only civil liberties but humanity itself is threatened by an increasingly degraded and dehumanizing visual culture. Nevertheless, despite changing conditions of visuality, Atwood continues to recommend literature as a viable space within which to develop a critical response to visual culture.