Teaching With AI

Rigor and humanity, not panic or surrender.

Artificial intelligence is changing what it means to read, write, and think. Many institutions are looking for faculty who can articulate a thoughtful response — not a ban, not a free-for-all, but a defensible pedagogy. This is mine.

Premise

The goal was never the essay. It was the mind that writes it.

If we treat writing only as a product, generative AI looks like a threat. If we treat it as thinking — the discipline of forming, testing, and revising ideas — then AI becomes something we can teach about as readily as we teach with. My approach keeps the human capacities of judgment, voice, and critical reasoning at the center, and makes the tool an object of study rather than a shortcut around learning.

“The question is not whether students will use AI. It is whether they will understand what it does to their thinking — and choose deliberately.”

The framework

Five commitments

01

Ethical Use

Clear, transparent norms for when and how AI may be used — disclosure, attribution, and academic integrity treated as teachable practices, not just policed rules.

02

AI-Enhanced Composition

Using AI to support brainstorming, feedback, and revision in ways that strengthen — rather than outsource — the student's own writing process.

03

Critical Thinking

Teaching students to interrogate generated text: to evaluate sources, detect error and bias, and recognize what a model cannot know or judge.

04

Process Over Product

Assessment that values drafting, reflection, and growth — designs that are meaningful precisely because they reward thinking AI can't do for the student.

05

Multimodal Composition

Expanding writing beyond text — into audio, visual, and interactive forms — so students learn how meaning shifts across media and tools.

In practice

Documented, not theoretical

I build and test these approaches in real classrooms and projects. See the Scholarship and Media & Projects pages for experiments and write-ups.

For departments & institutions

I can help your faculty meet this moment.

Beyond my own teaching, I lead faculty workshops and give talks on building AI-aware curricula, assignment design, and integrity policy. If your institution is working through what AI means for the humanities, let's talk.