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This project is generously supported by a California State University Chancellor's Office 2025-26 CSU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Educational Innovations Challenge grant.

Project Overview and Timeline
One of AI’s most exciting potential uses is in the realm of writing. Today’s Large Language Models (LLMs) have an uncanny ability to produce texts that accurately respond to a wide variety of writing opportunities. From emails to essays to scientific lab reports, AI can produce texts that are seemingly equal to, or even better than, anything human writers could produce on their own. This creates a situation in which students are tempted to use AI to do their work for them, and faculty members are tempted to use AI to police their students in a never-ending cycle of mistrust and wasted opportunity.

The goal of this project, a collaborative effort between the San José State University Writing Across the Curriculum program and the University Writing Center, is to help faculty members end this unproductive cycle and replace it with one in which their students learn how to ethically and productively use generative AI in their own writing processes. 

We propose to accomplish this goal by developing and delivering a professional development workshop on the potential uses of AI in writing and writing-intensive classrooms. The workshop will be offered to twenty faculty members – ten each semester – who teach these courses in departments all across campus, particularly our junior-level GE writing in the disciplines course – 100W – which is a requirement for all students in all majors. In the first part of the workshop, participants will play the role of students in an AI-infused writing classroom. They will learn how to use a variety of AI tools – particularly Google's Gemini, which is available to all CSU students and faculty, and ChatGPT Edu, which is available to all San José State students and faculty – and then use them to complete a short writing assignment.

In the second half of the workshop, participants will critically reflect on their experience and brainstorm ways to incorporate AI tools into their own classrooms. They will revise course syllabi and develop new and innovative writing assignments that teach students how to ethically and productively integrate AI into their own writing processes. Two Writing Center tutors, undergraduate students themselves, will be included in the workshop. They will work alongside faculty members to complete the short writing assignment, then provide critical feedback from a student perspective on our ideas for integrating AI into our own courses. Based on our experience with previous Writing Across the Curriculum programming, this project will directly impact more than 1,000 students over the one-year term of this project.

Project Timeline
June 2025 – Project Start. Design and develop workshop plan and assessment tools. Recruit first cohort of faculty participants (ten faculty members per cohort) through established Writing Across the Curriculum program processes.

Fall 2025 – Deliver workshop to Cohort 1. Collect pre- and post-workshop assessment data.

Late Fall 2025 – Recruit second cohort of faculty participants. Analyze Cohort 1 data and make revisions to workshop.

January 2026 – Submit Midterm Report.

Spring 2026 – Deliver workshop to Cohort 2. Collect pre- and post-workshop assessment data from Cohort 2. Collect curricular implementation data from Cohort 1.

Late Spring 2026 – Analyze Cohort 2 data and Cohort 1 implementation data and make revisions to workshop.

June 2026 – Project End and Submit Final Report.

Summer 2026 – Integrate revised workshop into SJSU Writing Across the Curriculum programming.

Fall 2026 – Collect Cohort 2 implementation data and make revisions to workshop.

Findings

Data Sets