writing technologies

Can ChatGPT Make the Right Moves? A Comparative Rhetorical Analysis of Human-Authored and AI-Generated Texts

Michelle Cook, Gaby Meindl, and Angela Laflen Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Helping students develop rhetorical knowledge acts as a bridge between understanding GenAI tools on a functional level and being a critical reader of texts generated by AI. Because we are preparing students to enter academic and professional spaces that have been, and […]

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Convincing the Machine: Using Rhetoric to Get the Most Out of AI Writing Assistants in Proposal Writing

Ronald B. Cole, Lauren N. Maher, and Rich Rice Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment teaches students to treat generative AI as a rhetorical collaborator that must be convinced through recursive prompting, strategic data curation, and continuous adjustment. Students assume the role of grant writers advocating for a project, community, or initiative of

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Brand Style Guide Assignment

Madeleine Sorapure Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The Brand Style Guide (BSG) is a common genre for organizations both large and small. It establishes a verbal and visual style that employees can apply in print and digital communications, yielding consistency across different expressions of the brand. Creating a BSG is therefore a good fit

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Writing, Translating, and Revising Menus: An International Virtual Exchange Project

Massimo Verzella Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment is informed by a pedagogical tradition that emphasizes the connections between the fields of writing and translation (Matsuda; Horner and Tetreault), a connection that becomes even more relevant in technical communication (Gnecchi et al.; Petts et al.). Just like writing, translation is process-based, iterative, and

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Discourse Communities Manual Presentation

Andrew H. Yim Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In this activity, which will take around 3-4 weeks, students are tasked to research one discourse community (e.g., college club, job, volunteer organization) that they have never joined or recently became a member of. They need to pick out the 6 elements of the organization including:

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Large Language Models and Chain Stories: An Exploration of Creativity and Artificial Intelligence

Chris Mayer Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This lesson develops students’ awareness of the synergistic and disruptive potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in storytelling. Designed for a first-year writing class, the lesson explores the interplay between creativity and AI by examining LLMs’ storytelling capabilities. Students will collaboratively create a chain story, then use

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Gen AI: Large Language Models and Linguistic Whitewashing

Chris Mayer Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This multi-step lesson engages students in the critical analysis of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) and its impact on linguistic diversity. Through assigned readings, writing tasks, and in-class activities, students will explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) can reinforce linguistic hierarchies and biases. Even older LLMs, like

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Composing Technical Documents for Localized Usability in the International Context

Keshab Raj Acharya Volume 6 Chapter Description Culture matters in defining your behaviors, norms, values, and belief systems. These cultural factors affect how audiences in the international context perceive and react to the message you share with them. These cultural factors also mean that writing for international audiences is different from writing for your domestic

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How to Write for Global Audiences

Birgitta Meex Volume 6 Chapter Description In today’s globalized world, the demand for high quality localized content is growing. Localization entails translation of source content into one or more target languages and adaptation of the translated content to the needs and cultural specificity of the local market (locale). Source text quality together with internationalization is

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Designing Multimodal Technical Instructions for Cross-Cultural Resonance Using a Culturally Inclusive Approach

Audrey G. Bennett Volume 6 Chapter Description The culturally inclusive approach introduced in this chapter can be used to design multimodal technical instructions that resonate cross-culturally by 1) representing culture competently from knowledge gleaned by conducting primary and secondary research and 2) enabling cross-cultural interpretation through interactive aesthetics. The approach aligns with a curriculum that

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