Abstract Book of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences Studies
Year: 2025
DOI:
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From Writing to Prompt Engineering: Adapting to Paradigmatic Shifts in Language Arts Instruction in the Age of Generative AI
P. Darin Payne
ABSTRACT:
In just a few short years, theories and practices of teaching and learning have been upended by, and are rapidly evolving amidst, the seemingly instantaneous emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) across what Duin and Pedersen call the “sociotechnical ecologies” that inform higher education. For those of us teaching language arts, and written communication foundations in particular, the text generation capabilities of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are transforming the processes through which we produce, teach, and assess virtually all forms of writing, impacting how we understand such cornerstones of language arts instruction as creativity, cognition, and collaboration. This paper provides both theoretical and practical means by which educators can adapt to (and sometimes resist or negotiate) such paradigmatic shifts engendered by GenAI and its unprecedented integration into our and our students’ lives. The paper draws specifically on new scholarship by experts in the constellated field(s) of composition studies and digital humanities (Dobrin; Vee; Watkins), as well as on institutional guidelines provided by federal joint task forces (Adisa et al; Byrd et al), in order to map a flexible framework for writing educators adapting to GenAI within their own local, institutional contexts. Finally, the paper provides an illustrative case study, namely the author’s own Research-One university system, wherein the development and delivery of language arts pedagogies that negotiate the presence of GenAI must be articulated within and against pre-existing core requirements, assessment protocols, and longstanding curricula in written communication.
keywords: language and technology, theory and practice, sociotechnical ecologies, framework, composition studies