Assignments in this Series
This series includes four weekly assignments that focus on the literacy narrative essay.
For English 1105: First-Year Writing, the first major assignment is the literacy narrative essay. This sequence of assignments is a plan for the use of AI by students in a first-year writing class.
In my classes, students usually spend four weeks to complete this project. However, during this four week period, students engage in a series of low-stake formative assignments which build up to the summative assignment, the literacy narrative essay.
The formative assignments include warm-up exercises such as reading assignments and discussions to familiarize students with foundational concepts. Additionally, students are always required to complete a reflective assignment as a final step to complete this major project. Introspecting on their learning journey, they discuss what they learned throughout the process, the challenges they faced, and what they want to do differently the next time to improve their work and enhance their learning experience. These reflection assignments will be more frequent this semester, as they will be a component of every AI-assisted assignment. In AI use reflection assignments, I will prompt students to think about their experience with AI integration by asking such questions as
- How did AI assist in the completion of the assignment?
- What were the benefits and limitations of using AI?
- How might they use AI differently in future assignments?
- What prompts did they use?
- How effectively did the prompts work?
This series of assignments includes the formative assignment instructions and their objectives, in some of which students are required to use AI. It is shown why and how students should use AI and reflective assignments are also incorporated to prompt students to report on what they learn and the challenges they faced while using AI.
I designed the assignments in a way which encourage students to
- compare their original ideas with some alternate ideas suggested by AI;
- find some counterpoints for the arguments they make in the online and in-class discussions;
- engage in AI-assisted group activities with a focus on problem-solution tasks.
- learn how to get AI feedback on their multiple drafts to improve their writing, guarantee a higher quality work, and take steps for better efficiency in the future.
- engage in think-pair-share activities to gather additional feedback, both through traditional peer review sessions and AI-assisted peer review sessions.
- learn how to make a mind map by connecting different ideas generated by AI through several iterations or different tools.
- learn how to use AI to teach the concepts discussed in their reading assignment, where volunteer students design reading activities with AI assistance.
Last Updated on July 8, 2025