Teaching Writing in College

Tom Skeen
  • 5.0 (10)
  • EDUCATION
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Teaching Writing in College explores the connections between writing pedagogy and learning transfer. Episodes emphasize praxis--the relationship between the theoretical and practical--in an effort to understand how people learn to write and how educators might make the most of the time they have with their learners. The driving question is: How can instructors in higher education leverage theory, science, pedagogy, and craft most effectively to help their learners with writing?

  1. FEB 10

    35. Transparency in Writing in the Age of AI

    Questions about whether and how AI is used in writing and other communication seem to be an important part of the writer/audience relationship. In this episode, I walk through my effort to include transparency as a form of knowledge about writing. With transparency as a frame, this semester I have shared two strategies with my students that can help them be transparent in their use of AI.Teaching Writing in College is available:YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    17 min

  2. JAN 26

    34. Infuse Some Sanity into Your Teaching in the Age of AI

    In episode 34, I consider another way of looking at my success with AI in the classroom: through assessment. To my mind, AI has imposed a great deal of guesswork into assessment of student writing: "Did my student write this, or was it written by AI?" Since AI is here to stay as part of just about anyone's writing ecosystem, it's important to focus on what really matters: "Is writing being written in a way that still helps it meet audience expectations?" I offer a brief overview of how I try to tackle that question, using the rhetorical concept of evidence as an example. Are my students using evidence in a way that seems to fit with a given genre? Using the term "evidence" with my students as a key term for knowledge about writing and having classroom activities about how evidence might vary depending on a given genre has set me up to make assessment a little bit easier, whether AI played a role in the writing or not.Teaching Writing in College is available:YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    15 min

  3. JAN 12

    33. What I Did to Start a Conversation about AI with My Students in Spring 2026

    In this episode, I share a short lesson plan I used to begin a conversation with students about AI on the first day of classes. I showed them an AI-generated ad that stirred some controversy, we had a brief discussion regarding students' judgments about the ethics of AI use, and then I also introduced some of my own. I hope you find this short(er) episode helpful!

    9 min

  4. 11/24/2025

    32. Success with Teaching vis-a-vis AI

    In this long overdue episode, I'm excited to share my own recent classroom success. After coaching and encouragement on my part, notetaking on my students' part, and then asking students to pull their laptops out periodically for several drafting sessions for their rhetorical analysis papers, the result was very little AI use. On this episode, I'll talk through how I feel I know and how I went about it.Teaching Writing in College is available:YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    24 min

  5. 09/09/2025

    31. AI Policy, My Teaching Improvement Report, and More

    After my first week of teaching this semester, it's time for a report. I promised to share my AI policy, which will be first up in this episode. I'll also share my classroom "coaching" report. Earlier this summer, I discussed the possibility of adapting the way in which my favorite workout trainers try to motivate me to stay focused for the duration of my workouts. Did I do a good job during the first week in keeping my students focused on writing practice? I'll also share briefly how I used Cornell notes and how I feel I made a mistake in my presentation that may have disrupted students' working memory. I'd also like to discuss briefly what I plan to do this coming week--it's still early in the semester, so I need a way to get students to buy into the applicability of writing courses to other things they are doing: not just in an abstract way, but as concretely and immediately as possible. Join me on this journey!Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (2012). Knowledge to go: A motivational and dispositional view of transfer. Educational Psychologist, 47(3), 248–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.693354Teaching Writing in College is available:YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    32 min

  6. 09/01/2025

    30. Handwriting, Practice, Participation, and Cornell Notes

    Electronic technologies have been embedded in classrooms for decades, but the emergence of genAI has prompted some professors to resort back to handwritten assessments, such as bluebooks and notes. The concern, of course, is cognitive offloading--that an overreliance on genAI for learning tasks short-circuits the learning process by taking away opportunities for cognitive processing.  In this episode, I present a few studies from the decade before genAI that show how electronic technologies can be detrimental to learning, which prompted me to ask students for daily handwritten notes for participation. However, my method still needed improvement: I also relate how, last year, I stumbled upon the Cornell note taking method, which has important learning strategies built in. Toward the end, I provide a sample to show what it looks like in my classes with students' practice with conceptual knowledge and metacognition. The Cornell note taking system makes it easy for students to review their notes and use them later, and it's also easy for teachers to assess them.Show notesBrookings Institution synopsis of 3 handwriting vs. screen studiesDynarski, S. M. (2017, August 10). For better learning in college lectures, lay down the laptop and pick up a pen. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/for-better-learning-in-college-lectures-lay-down-the-laptop-and-pick-up-a-pen/Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing TaskNataliya Kosmyna, Eugene Hauptmann, Ye Tong Yuan, Jessica Situ, Xian-Hao Liao, Ashly Vivian Beresnitzky, Iris Braunstein, Pattie MaesGet the paper "Your Brain on ChatGPT" in PDF format:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872Research team's web page for the study at MIT:https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/your-brain-on-chatgpt/overview/Official Web site for "Your Brain on ChatGPT":https://www.brainonllm.com/Teaching Writing in College is available: YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    22 min

  7. 08/25/2025

    29. Inviting Students to Reflect on genAI (Summer Reflection Series, Episode 6)

    As a follow up to episode 28, I made a plan to introduce reflection about genAI on my first day of classes. I start by reviewing a post I encountered on social media that got me thinking in more detail about asking students to reflect on genAI. From there, I present the new lesson plan and then offer several more ideas for learning about genAI as the semester progresses. And, let's face it: I'll be learning along with my students. As the accomplished novice that I am, I not only need to enhance my own knowledge about genAI, but I also need to know what students are thinking about it. This lesson will help me, as a writing instructor, begin that journey this semester in a more intentional way this semester than before.Teaching Writing in College is available: YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    26 min

  8. 08/15/2025

    28. What do Students Need to Know about genAI? (Summer Reflection Series, Episode 5)

    As my start date for fall semester draws nearer, I've started thinking in more detail about the kinds of knowledge students need to help them with writing. The distinction Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle made in 2007 concerning the need to *learn about* writing--as opposed to *learning to write*--has resonated with me for a long time. And now, I'd argue that the same idea applies to AI--it's not that writers need to learn how to write with AI, but rather that they need to learn *about* AI. With that in mind, I talk through a set of rhetorical skills, or knowledge about writing, that I typically bring to my writing classes and then reflect on what knowledge I can add about AI in the upcoming semester.Show notes:Downs, D. & Wardle, E. (2007). Teaching about writing, righting misconceptions: (Re)envisioning “First-year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies.” College Composition and Communication, 58(4), 552-584.Teaching Writing in College is available: YouTube (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUwApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-writing-in-college/id1667922309YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUWbbrcygqkZvxqdPCqhuzu0yyx5trJUw&si=ZnTI_Q3dItN5rodfSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TxG7hTN6qaJHN9euDBIZU?si=ur3jQve0TdyeSLKVyLsNgwSocials:Email: teachingwritingincollege@gmail.comFacebook: Teaching Writing in CollegeBluesky: @teachingwriting.bsky.socialYouTube: @teachingwritingincollegeMastodon: mastodon.social/@teachingwritingincollege

    23 min
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About

Teaching Writing in College explores the connections between writing pedagogy and learning transfer. Episodes emphasize praxis--the relationship between the theoretical and practical--in an effort to understand how people learn to write and how educators might make the most of the time they have with their learners. The driving question is: How can instructors in higher education leverage theory, science, pedagogy, and craft most effectively to help their learners with writing?

Information

  • Creator
    Tom Skeen
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    35
  • Rating
    Clean