An Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor has conducted research showing that artificial intelligence can help students understand the writing process rather than supplant it.

“There has been so much discussion over the last few years about whether generative AI is going to totally replace writing or even learning,” said Dr. Emily Dux Speltz, assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Worldwide and director of the Virtual Communication Lab. The research, recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Computers and Composition, “showed that students are actually able to do some really advanced and creative thinking with AI assistance,” Dux Speltz said.

The key, she said, starts with debunking common beliefs about AI. For instance, students often think that writing with AI works like a Google search. Enter a prompt, and get your answer.

In reality, though, writing with AI is not a fully automated process. It involves carefully crafting a prompt as closely aligned as possible with a specific writing objective, then fine-tuning it through multiple iterations to achieve that objective. After that, the writing must be carefully vetted for overstatements and errors, as well as style and inconsistencies. The thought process is similar to structuring a piece of writing without AI.

“We should help students see how there can be a big difference between just putting one prompt and copying the output, versus iterating with several prompts, critically evaluating the output and revising intentionally,” Dux Speltz said.

Another problematic belief about AI is that it has all the answers because of its tone of confidence and fluency.

“We should help students see how generative AI output isn’t necessarily ‘smart’ just because it may sound smart,” Dux Speltz said, adding that students’ own expertise is needed to evaluate what AI provides.

Through two experimental courses conducted in 2023 and 2024, Dux Speltz and Abram Anders, an associate professor at Dux Speltz’s alma mater, Iowa State University, developed a framework to help students use AI effectively in their writing process.

The method involved guiding students to understand what the researchers describe as three “threshold concepts,” which relate to the idea that AI cannot produce effective writing without intervention and guidance.

The concepts included:

  • Writing with AI is an experimental process.
  • Writing with AI requires expertise and dialogue.
  • Writing with AI should augment rhetorical agency.

“One of the core ideas of threshold concepts is that once you cross over into this new level of understanding, it is impossible to go back to how you thought before,” Dux Speltz said. “What I have found is that once my students realized that AI output isn’t magical or perfect, and that it actually requires a lot of critical thought and intentional effort to design a process that facilitates effective AI assistance, they can never go back.”

One of the students who was involved in the experimental courses was quoted in the Computers and Composition publication as saying, “My ideas and creativity are the base for everything. AI is just the tool I use to execute my ideas.”

Dux Speltz, who is involved in offering Embry-Riddle minor and certificate programs in Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Creativity, said the findings demonstrate that “professors can support students in getting to this point of being able to use these tools more effectively to support advanced thinking, learning and writing.”