AI can be useful for editing and revision throughout the writing process. Below are assignment suggestions that use feedback, editing, revision and iteration to improve writing.
- Small Editing
- Do a brief in class writing exercise. Then ask students to use AI to create multiple new versions with a series of different prompts
- Provide alternative versions by changing the tone, analogies images, characters or setting
- Transform this sentence into literary or more poetic language
- Rewrite this in the style of Hemingway, a political rant, a sermon, or the NY Times
- Have students paste all of this into a new document and then annotate and evaluate the choices. In the next class, have students rewrite the original work.
- Transitions
- Provide or have students write two different paragraphs on related topics. What is the connection between the two? Write several transition sentences that make different connections. Ask an AI to do the same. Can you alter your prompts to get the AI to make a similar connection but execute it in a different way?
- Progressive Writing with AI
- Feedback from a writing tutor
- Prompt > You are a writing tutor helping a college student improve. Start by asking me to provide a writing sample and then provide one way to improve this writing. You can reference an example from my writing, but give me only one way to improve at a time. Don't just improve the writing yourself. Repeat this process at least five times.
- Progressive editing with a rubric
- Students can use AI to create poor or incomplete examples that need to be revised into improved examples
- Prompt > You are a writing tutor helping a college student improve. Here is a rubric with X skill levels. Start by asking me to provide a writing sample, and then assess it according to the rubric. Use this to create new paragraphs at the same writing proficiency as my sample, and ask me to revies and edit the new paragraphs. Don't just improve the writing yourself. Use the rubric to provide feedback to me on how the revised work is better, but also supply one additional way that I could improve this revision. Ask me to resubmit until I've achieved the next skill level for each part of the rubric. Repeat the process until my revisions meet all areas of the next standard.
- Writing Styles and Multiple Audiences
- Student can be encouraged to use AI prompts to transform their writing
- Suggest five different ways/styles to rewrite this essay and provide examples of the first paragraph
- Guide me in modifying this text to appeal to a more diverse/religions/technical audience
- Have students analyze the AI suggestions. How do the changes help connect with these new audiences? Rewrite the essay to merge these points of view and anticipate how conflicting audiences might react. Edit with track changes so that you can identify the most critical moments and languages.
- Recursive Writing with AI
- Have students write or co-write an essay with AI. Then use this prompt
- Prompt > Identify which ideas and arguments in this essay are common, flawed, repetitive, or cultutally limited.
- Reverse Engineering
- Ask students to analyze the contributing factors that explain a specific situation, scene, response, or event and ask them to transfer these factors to a new context
- What are the most important factors contributing to the popularity of Taylor Swift? Design a process to replicate this success with a specific currently unknown singer
Examples are directly from chapter 11, Writing with AI, from the book Bowen, J.A. & Watson, C.E. (2024). Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. Johns Hopkins University Press.
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