Gen AI Teaching Idea: Lara Bovilsky's "What Counts as Evidence and Argument?" assignments

lara bovilsky

Lara Bovilsky
Associate Professor of English, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies
College of Arts and Sciences 

“I can say that the students really registered what it was that the AIs were leaving out. The 'What Counts as Evidence and Argument?' had a palpable effect on them, in the moment, in discussion, and in their subsequent submitted work. I have had a dramatically lower rate of submissions that seem as though they might be GenAI-involved. And I do let them use GenAI for a few specific things, but they need to submit the inputs and outputs."

Teaching Idea

Sequenced assignments beginning with students’ own practice of core skills for literary analysis working with a speech from Macbeth, then their analysis of GenAI’s work on the same prompt. When students missed flaws in Gen AI’s work, Professor Bovilsky modeled her revision of GenAI’s product.

Assignment Details