Kerri Rinaldi
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
This structured classroom activity offers an agency-centered approach to teaching critical AI literacy in the writing classroom through a feminist methodology lens. Rather than approaching AI literacy as training students how to use generative AI tools, the activity positions students as rhetorical judges and critical witnesses, aligning with feminist methodologies of refusal that foreground consent, transparency, and the material conditions that make AI possible (Fernandes and McIntyre 67; Rodríguez 6). The assignment is highly adaptable for first-year writing and writing-intensive courses across disciplines, and it supports instructors who either allow limited AI use or prefer to discourage it. This activity is best sequenced in the first half of the semester, but not with immediacy, as it helps develop students as writers, but is most successful when students have first been exposed to examples of good disciplinary writing. The activity begins with a discussion of LLMs’ context: what they are, how they work in simple terms, and a brief overview of genAI use’s risks and drawbacks. Students then are guided to produce an AI-generated essay responding to a course-relevant prompt. Working individually, they evaluate the essay using one of two strategies: (1) applying the instructor’s rubric or a co-constructed rubric, or (2) answering guided questions about rhetorical effectiveness, accuracy, bias, and genre conventions. Through this evaluation, students learn to articulate what makes writing effective within a specific disciplinary, rhetorical, and genre context. Designed to simultaneously foster critical AI literacy in students while also helping them to become stronger writers through evaluation and meta-cognition, this activity also demystifies the composing process and reduces reliance on AI by revealing its shortcomings in analysis, nuance, and writerly decision-making. Ultimately, the assignment supports students in developing rhetorical judgment and writerly identity while fostering critical, ethical engagement with emerging writing technologies.