Jennifer N. Mason
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
This in-class activity invites students and instructors to co-investigate how generative AI and other writing technologies shape composing processes across academic and professional contexts. The activity is grounded in workflow literacy—defined here as the reflective practice of analyzing how tasks, tools, technologies, and collaborators interact across a writing process (Lockridge and van Ittersum; Gottfredson and Mosher). Drawing on Tim Lockridge and Derek van Ittersum’s work on writing workflows as socio-technical arrangements, and on Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher’s framework of learning-in-the-workflow, the activity asks students to make visible the decisions and trade-offs that are often invisible within everyday composing. Annette Vee’s scholarship on AI and writing further informs the activity’s critical stance, positioning AI-mediated writing as a site of uncertainty and negotiation rather than inevitable automation (Vee, “Large Language Models”). Rather than treating AI as either a threat to academic integrity or an efficiency tool to be accepted uncritically, this activity resists narratives that frame technological adoption as inevitable. Instead, students and instructors work together as co-investigators, mapping the stages of an actual writing or research project and identifying the people, tools (AI, digital, and non-digital), and decisions involved at each stage. For each tool or practice under consideration, students evaluate questions of efficiency (Does this save time, or just shift labor?), efficacy (Does this actually improve my work?), and ethics (Is my authorship and rhetorical decision-making transparent?). A central feature of this activity is the instructor’s role as co-learner rather than expert authority. Instructors complete their own version of the workflow map and share observations about the values and learning goals embedded in their course design, making visible how their own commitments shape the conditions in which students make tool-use decisions. The activity culminates in a brief workflow proposal or reflection memo in which students articulate how their tool choices align with their project goals and ethical commitments.