This paper reports on how undergraduate students evaluated writing outputs created with and without generative artificial intelligence (AI). The paper focuses specifically on two aspects of writing and AI: how prior writing knowledge influenced students’ thinking about AI tools, and how the writing skills to which they were exposed in the writing classroom helped them work with AI-generated materials. This research builds upon Bearman et al.’s (2024) work on evaluative judgement as a pedagogical tool to support learners as they work with AI-mediated texts. The paper uses this lens to identify challenges that learners have in applying writing knowledge to AI-mediated situations and to devise pedagogical means to support student learning in these contexts. We found that, while students could typically evaluate structural components of writing, they struggled to evaluate conceptual ideas both for AI and human generated texts. The findings speak more generally to the need for students to develop their evaluative abilities, as well as ways that AI may reveal and amplify existing challenges that learners have with evaluating the quality of writing, engaging with source materials, and applying genre knowledge to create meaning.

This review considers Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI and its implications for writing pedagogies.

This paper reconsiders the common use of mind maps as only a brainstorming tool that occurs before writing. The paper contemplates how mind mapping can be a useful pedagogical strategy throughout the writing process, not just at the beginning. The metacognitive benefits of mind mapping can support writers at all stages of their writing. Mind mapping can make their thinking overt and allow writers to make new connections throughout their revisions. The paper draws on an intrinsic case study (Stake, 2005) of sixteen first-year writing students who used mind maps at the beginning of their research papers and again as they grappled with feedback to re-design their drafts for submission. Students reported that, while the initial mind map had limited benefits on their writing, the second mind map acted as a vehicle for them to make connections between their draft, their feedback, and their next steps as writers. This second map offered a liminal space in which students could dwell with their feedback, make their thinking visible, and strategize how they could implement that feedback to make their writing stronger. The paper offers a new look at how teachers can use mind mapping to enhance students’ writing processes.