2023 was a year no one will forget. It was the year that everyone in higher education sat up and took notice of generative AI.

Cummings et al., 2024, p. 1

Introduction

I define generative AI technologies as computer applications performing human-oriented tasks, such as researching, composing, decision-making, and problem-solving, that affect “how we write, what we write, and the networks and assemblages in which we write” (Bedington et al., 2024, p. 1). Though I always advocated teaching writing with technology (e.g., having students use Canvas to engage in peer-reviews or collaborate in a shared Google Doc to monitor real-time revisions), my initial dread instantly turned me into a luddite. My disillusionment arose from artificial integrations poised to deliver the final blow for writing teachers who feared student writers might opt out of learning how to write original material and depend on large language models (LLMs) for ready-made essays, reports, and assignments. This perceived literacy crisis may be attributed to our collective fear of academic dishonesty while we hope that the right technology will soon get ahead of integrity violations or plagiarism detectors. I was already wary of auto-generated content when I read the Modern Language Association (MLA)-Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Joint Task Force Statement on Writing and AI in 2023 and reviewed published articles on generative AI and teaching writing, including contributions from the special issue of Computers and Composition: An International Journal in 2024. In their working paper, the MLA and CCCC Joint Task Force (2023) described the risks and benefits of AI, while proposing recommendations for “constructive and collaborative approaches to AI and writing, […] reimagining and revisiting commonplaces of our fields […] with care, dialogue, reflection, and humanity” (p. 11). Admittedly, I have always resisted innovations that claim to replace the process of writing where most of the learning happens. But I soon realized that with more information on how to navigate these machine learning-powered technologies, it is also possible to minimize the pitfalls and maximize the benefits in the classroom over time.

Despite those ideas and assurances, I struggle to get on the train of revolutionizing today’s pedagogies with AI technology or to fully embrace the reality that my students’ writing skills may be forever mediated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, DeepSeek, etc. I sometimes catch myself drifting to the late '80s when I was a college student, romanticizing the simplicity of writing from scratch sans word processors, open educational resources (OER), or search engines. My thoughts turn to the resources and technology that were available at that time, the experiences I had with my writing teachers, and my limited knowledge of writing and teaching. Ultimately, reconciling my previous perspective with my newfound knowledge means looking again at how writing classes have developed and persisted across time and national borders.

From the Margins

During college, I navigated the writing process on my own, learning through trial and error. In 1988, I wrote a report about the underground music scene for my freshman composition class at a premier state university in the Philippines. Sheets of paper, pencils, erasers, periodicals, and books covered our long dining table-cum-office table for the weekend while I prewrote and drafted my thoughts on a portable SCM Courier C/T typewriter and worked tirelessly over several cups of coffee. Despite the dearth of materials on this topic before Web 2.0, social media, or AI, I used the library to research how independent bands tried to make their cut in the business without the perks of record deals while retaining creative control. I found sources on marketing management and alternative industries from references and musical fanzines, all print sources accessible only through card catalogs and a library card. Traditional resources shaped my research practices and allowed me to submit my interest-related report before the due date.

To my surprise, my writing teacher deemed my topic academically unorthodox and as a result lowered my grade. She insisted that my work fell outside the parameters of academic writing despite my thorough research and passionate engagement with the topic. During my third year as an English major, I took an upper-division course in stylistics and was conflicted about what topic to choose for the term paper. My first-year writing experience led me to choose a topic I knew my professor would appreciate. Using research, critical analysis, and predictable organization, I submitted my work on discourse analysis. I was relieved when I completed the paper, but the labor itself had brought no excitement. I had worked only to please my professor. The result was a higher grade; I was satisfied but also confused.

In retrospect, I came to understand those confusing/negative experiences as an important part of my journey to become a transnational scholar. When I pursued a PhD in rhetoric and writing in 2004 at a midwestern state university in the United States, I realized that all writing pedagogies are context-dependent. I came across the works of David Gold (2003) who presented Melvin B. Tolson’s style of teaching rhetorical norms to empower race and ethnicity in the classroom and beyond, Geoffrey Sirc (1997) who connected the evolution of teaching writing to the punk movement with its myriad focal shifts for promoting student voices (p. 12), James Berlin (2008) who contextualized a taxonomy of writing instruction for the acquisition of academic language, and so on. There are other writing scholars I could enumerate here but they would make the same point in that current discussions on writing instruction ought to communicate the role of composition pedagogy in student learning. My aim is not to define a singular method that would eliminate the tension between teaching and learning since I believe that sporadic learning from raw experiences by (and for) teachers can be productive. In place of a resolution, then, I seek to take stock of my own perspectives on student writing and writing pedagogy. I wondered how my former professors taught writing in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, why I felt either elated or confused after receiving feedback on a paper, and what kind of orientation I had been exposed to during the late '80s and early '90s. My curiosity morphed into the following questions when I taught writing a decade later, this time, in a first language (L1) setting: What do I value as a transnational practitioner in teaching writing? What topics do I encourage my students to write about? What writing genres, literacies, and parameters are deemed acceptable?

To this end, I want to briefly sketch my experiences. My journey continues with snippets of personal notes and observations on effective teaching that have stood the test of time despite the complexities of today’s emergent technologies in the writing classroom. It is important to note that while my reflections solely focus on teaching writing, they do reveal broader insights about pedagogy in the digital age, exploring how teachers across disciplines can foster critical engagement, preserve human-centered learning, and navigate ethical dilemmas posed by digital tools, including AI, in higher education.

1. Open Communication

Open communication is still necessary to gain critical consciousness and affect transformation. Since knowledge-making is a social construct, most writing teachers encourage dialogic activities in the classroom to allow intersections, angles, and possibilities for information exchange and meaning making within various systems and contexts. Looking back, the absence of class discussions and one-on-one conferences while writing my first-year report paper resulted in faulty expectations. Open communication among writing peers and the teacher, however, could have affected the quality of my draft with multiple insights for revisions. Paulo Freire (1993) argues, “authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication” (p. 77). Contrary to a vertical relationship of the banking model or Platonic rhetorical education in which the master/philosopher initiates dialectical questions for the protégé, the teacher-student relationship must exist horizontally for impartiality. That a teacher holds infinite knowledge is rather autocratic, denigrating students whose minds are often rife with alternative frames of reference. In fact, writing teachers cannot think for their students nor can they impose on them if we subscribe to Isocrates’ liberal education: “A virtuous teacher … could influence them [students] by being a virtuous audience for their rhetorical efforts” (Bizzell et al., 2020, p. 25). Learning how to properly connect with a rhetorical audience can be enhanced with regular peer and teacher dialogues.

My students love it when I deliberately incorporate short discussions in every meeting – either in pairs, small groups, or whole class – so they can share their thoughts about an assigned reading, a writing process, and so forth. I make my students read and talk and write a lot; from a language learning standpoint, students acquire discursive structures when they consistently read academic texts and practice their oral/written skills. In these and other ways, I also make clear the differences between and across languages as we analyzed sample readings on world Englishes to embrace language diversity and cross-cultural awareness. Embodying a translingual approach to composition classrooms (Horner et al., 2011), our class conversations on English texts by authors from the US, UK, Australia, Africa, and Asia were always engaging, revealing diverse structures in diction, syntax, and stylistics. One time, a student writer told me privately to exclude her from group discussions and, though secretly disappointed, I agreed but thought of other ways to get that student to participate, especially during a brainstorming session. I used the whiteboard to generate assorted writing styles, contexts, and contents and asked each one to add to the list. The class responded favorably to vision boards and since they were allowed to work on topics they truly cared about, everybody, including my passive writer, participated. This active pattern continued until our peer review workshops and “show and tell” exercises on the last day of class. When I noticed that passive student sitting up front mid-semester, I knew these methods had helped her engage with the material.

2. Personalized Training

Personalized training still paves the way for student-centered pedagogies to accommodate a range of writing proficiencies. Effective teaching involves learning students’ literacy practices, applying classroom techniques to display langue (competence) and parole (performance) (de Saussure, 1916/2011) and using effective strategies to improve performance. Corollary to this is the fact that novice writers need linguistic fluency and accuracy grounded in heterogeneous norms. In retrospect, I see that my own first-year writing teacher’s unfamiliarity with alternative music and underground lyrics/terminologies, plus my lack of rhetorical skill, all threw her off. Some of those problems could have been avoided had we met individually; conversely, I anticipated my English professor’s grasp of the subject when I composed that term paper for an upper-division course sans conference because I decided to write for her alone. Writing for only one person alienates the broader audience, whose perspectives and experiences may differ. A single lesson plan cannot possibly treat everyone’s writing challenges, but individual conferences can. Because writers bring different skills, experiences, and languages to the classroom, an effective teacher recognizes heterogeneity and avoids the consequences of being exclusionary. Composition courses readily become “a site for re-democratization – not only as a vehicle for social mobility, but for re-enfranchisement in a political climate marked by apathy and distance” (Jarratt, 1998, p. 85). Open admission policies especially encourage composition teachers to find a blueprint for learner autonomy and catalyze transformation within a democratic classroom. Students are to be equipped with critical thinking skills to solve problems competently, debate writerly concerns including editing, and go beyond class tests/quizzes. As such, “a vigorous argument with a teacher or a classmate over a point of grammar may be a surer mark of progress than a perfect score on an objective test or even an error-free composition, for it suggests that the student has invested the best energies of his mind in a problem he would once have been unable to notice or define, let alone solve” (Shaughnessy, 1977, p. 159). We know the static nature of memorizing rules is seldom effective and it is best to train individual writers to take responsibility, raise questions to resolve contested linguistic issues, and adopt a participatory design to decentralize the writing classroom.

I once had a student who required extra writing assistance, so I provided extended office hours whenever possible to increase his confidence in preparing for the end-of-term portfolio. Sometimes, he would ask for clarifications about a writing concept, and I would offer help right away. At other times, he would tell me he understood everything we had covered in class, so he was all set to work on his paper alone. I had to admit that at some point during our one-on-one conference, his confusion bothered me. This made me reassess my consultation approach to ensure he retained everything we discussed. For instance, I created a way to illustrate the concept of multiple synthesis using bright colored pens for source connections, paragraph development, and essay structure. I helped him maintain focus on the paper’s topic through informal conversations. Another major challenge was to train him to become an active learner so he could take more responsibility for his own progress. Based on his rough draft, he used the same-colored pens to mark his sources and detect underdevelopment, lack of focus, and the like. He analyzed his own writing and most of the time, he would revise something instantaneously without explicit instructions from me. Though I guided him through the process, he learned from our practice exercises and slowly began to write more confidently. Sometimes, teachers know when they’re making a breakthrough, and this was one such moment. The main insight I had into this teaching experience was that none of the important breakthroughs happened here without the help of personalized student conferences. I did not make anyone do anything beyond their wishes or push them to meet or to seek help. Ultimately, the students who received the most attention were not only those who were struggling, but also those who sought individual training outside of class.

3. Multimodal Assignments

Classrooms still create social conditions that can aggravate marginality – for example, if students are taught how to communicate exclusively in the language of the privileged without regard for individualism, then conditions for oppression remain (Rose, 1989). The role of critical thinking becomes powerful here, but the problem lies in systemic difficulties that persist for the less privileged. In a practical sense, the Freirean struggle is re-contextualized within Mike Rose’s (1989) appeal for social equilibrium to include those in the margins: “Students need more opportunities to write about what they’re learning and guidance in the techniques and conventions of that writing … to develop … critical literacy” (pp. 193-94). We do not want to exclude diverse abilities and practices but rather include the multiple literacies of writers across the spectrum. Aside from arguing about ideas for awareness versus grammatical correctness, for example, we might need to unearth digital literacy practices that students bring to our composition classrooms in order to promote inclusivity and belonging. Cynthia Selfe (2004) even articulates that the composition of new media texts for digital environments emphasizes visual elements, sound, and interactivity and demands “the multiple literacies of seeing and listening and manipulating, as well as those of writing and reading” (p. 43). I subscribe to a whole range of literacies as warranted, paying attention to our students’ print and online practices amid multiple languages, cultures, and contexts (Selfe, 2004, pp. 57–58). In particular, I love assigning technological literacy autobiographies as well as critiques of new media texts, alternative approaches to composing, and the effects of new media in/on a specific genre (Selfe, 2004, pp. 59–66), all of which adhere to the insufficiencies of only one type of literacy, standard of English, or source of knowledge.

On several occasions I asked my students to submit a multimodal composition assignment, remixing a print-based essay into digital format (e.g., video essay, software presentation, or podcast). Students would often get excited to experiment with another medium to remediate an existing work, explore other literacies to enhance digital skills, and use multiple codes (or languages) to deliver a message. Surprisingly, the ease with which they could navigate the modalities of the composing process is very telling of their proficiencies, especially my second language (L2) writers who would suddenly express fluency as if a light had been switched on. Whenever I would teach in computer-mediated classrooms, I’d notice my students’ seamless interaction with technology as computer screens were opened in a full-sized desktop among multiple software interfaces to reveal active learning, a scene which often reminded me of the late '80s but with my own makeshift office, typewriter, and papers scattered across the dining table. These workspaces should not be taken for granted but the contemporary differences in how things have evolved over time should help us appreciate the role of multimodal literacies in information dissemination: “The techniques of acquiring, organizing, evaluating, and creatively using multimodal information should become an increasingly important component of the English/Language Arts classroom” (National Council of Teachers of English, 2014, p. 18). Many forms of digital technology, including iPhones, tablets, computer screens, apps, etc., have become part of our everyday communication practices and writing teachers need to recognize and integrate them into the writing curricula. Of course, these technologies have both constraints and possibilities (Hess, 2018), both perils and promises, and using them effectively is even more important. The speed of technological advancement after the pandemic not only extended the possibilities of Zoom and other modes of synchronous teaching but also brought forth a whole range of approaches in teaching writing from incorporating multimodal composition to web design (Eyman, 2015), from utilizing generative AI in research (Pigg, 2024) to collaborative writing (Li, 2024), and so on. Even so, developments like these should help our students learn how to write, accommodate diverse competencies and languages, and promote differing writing processes, contexts, and spaces.

To the Center

Embracing my own limitations, I did what many writing teachers have done in the classroom by giving voice to perspectives often sidelined. I expected students to acquire clear thinking and engage in writing tasks to build their skills, whether they wrote about writing or learned how to write (Cochran et al., 2023); I asked students to write about their lived experiences or address case scenarios in various contexts; and I instructed students to work alone, in pairs, and in groups to produce different types of writing. I cultivated open communication, conducted personalized training and individual conferences, and employed multimodal assignments that encourage students to exercise their unique writing skills. Students did more than talk about their writing; they showed what they wrote, articulated what they learned, and planned what they needed to work on. And most of them were quick on the uptake.

Because of my experience as a student writer, I now experiment with pedagogies that include open communication, personalized training, and multimodal assignments to develop my students’ multiple literacies, language variations, and rhetorical chops. The overlapping spaces for writing and teaching writing from print to screen are still noteworthy subjects to study and examine around rhetoric and composition. Perhaps an advocacy on which we might stand, especially at this moment, is to use generative technology more strategically and intentionally. If we limit the performance of writing, we might run the risk of missing the technical aspects of free and open tools/templates that could enhance our students’ products. Conversely, if we put all our energies into the selection of a specific medium for composing writing, we might shortchange our students’ competencies by disregarding the effects of the writing process. The latter part involves, among other things, a reversal of my approach with AI usage in the classroom to support human-oriented activities like brainstorming and peer reviews. It requires new expertise from us as it does from our students. I realized plagiarism issues have always existed in different forms and varying degrees, whether before or after the internet of things, and in direct proportion to how teachers are able to detect them. Most students value learner autonomy even as we create opportunities for them to engage in collaborative learning and critical thinking. Besides, writers trained in making rhetorical choices for distinct audiences in diverse genres know the parameters of effective writing. Such awareness has served as my gauge for student success.

Final Thoughts

The digital age demands that educators across the disciplines, not just in writing studies, should adapt – not abandon – proven pedagogies that have stood the test of time. Though I represent only one teacherly account here, the same teaching strategies possess interdisciplinary applicability where human interaction and critical thinking are valued. If we allow students to engage meaningfully with the course content and with each other in class – through collaborative work, teacher conferences, and composition of multimodal assignments – we can effectively balance digital and student-centered learning, especially if we integrate AI technologies in the classroom. Drawing from personal experience, the following points may be adapted and/or modified liberally in various field-specific contexts by anyone who might teach an upper-division course that requires a writing project or two:

  • Model how to use AI responsibly and ethically (e.g., brainstorming versus plagiarism).

  • Emphasize the writing process – prewriting/outlining, drafting, peer reviews, revision, and reflection – over the written product to prioritize student voice and iterative learning instead of a one-size-fits-all AI-generated content.

  • Hold more peer workshops, collaborative exercises, and class discussions to promote interpersonal communication and critical thinking.

  • Assign narrative self-reflection essays in class for students to connect their academic development with course learning outcomes.

  • Give personalized process-oriented feedback (e.g., one-on-one teacher conferences) to reinforce student voice/agency over generative AI output.

  • Provide opportunities for students to remediate print-based assignments with multimodal compositions (e.g., software presentations, video essays, blogs, websites, ePortfolios, etc.) to motivate creativity, accommodate multiple literacies, and avoid AI shortcuts.

I focus on “keeping a humanistic view of teaching front and center” (Office of Educational Technology, 2023, p. 25). Rather than outright rejecting the technological advancements of today, we might pause to consider how interdisciplinary scholarship can illuminate key questions like: How can we collaborate within and across the disciplines to safeguard our students’ foundational literacies? What framework best establishes the ethical parameters for AI use across academic disciplines? To what extent do current AI policies in higher education promote original thought without compromising academic integrity? Chief among these assessments is the need to grapple with the ways in which technology shapes (and continues to shape) our individual teaching practices. I believe we all have skin in this game because these challenges transcend disciplinary boundaries and divergent professional lenses.

My writing itself has moved to the center. I surmise that assimilating to a new national context has contributed to my worth as a scholar in a dominant discourse and helped me teach others how to embrace their own identity and authentic voice in their writing. A writing teacher can guide students to discover their unique voice in a classroom surrounded by AI through time-tested strategies, creating a safe environment where students can thrive on personalized, collaborative, and multimodal writing practices. As I see it, important lessons from my lived realities as a student writer and writing teacher enable me to understand my own background as a transnational writer and shape my classes in rhetorically diverse ways, especially in this AI-driven digital age.