Promoting Writing Self-Efficacy in the Age of AI

The Age of AI

AI is nearly everywhere, including writing centers. In addition to my personal experiences, I’ve heard various anecdotes from other tutors about situations where they encounter writers’ overt and covert ways of using AI during asynchronous/synchronous appointments. As AI usage is a common circumstance many tutors find themselves in during their appointments, how can we handle these kinds of situations, especially within synchronous appointments? What can we do to achieve the overall goal of encouraging writers to produce original written work and avoid using AI platforms when unnecessary? 

Writing Self-Efficacy

To explore these questions, I want to take a closer look at a study done by researchers at Oakland University, Isabella M. Lundin, Victoria O’Connor, and Sherry Wynn Perdue (2023), as they examine how writing center appointment strategies can improve the sense of writing self-efficacy for writers. 

Writing self-efficacy is an individual’s self-perceived capability, or confidence, that they can effectively accomplish writing. The authors mention how writing anxiety, or an individual’s fear that they cannot successfully write, is a factor that plays a significant role in predicting writing self-efficacy: “Students are not going to produce anything of quality if they don’t think that they can produce anything of quality” (Lundin et al., 2023).

In terms of AI, I suspect that people may lack a sense of writing self-efficacy and instead have a heightened sense of writing anxiety, which leads them to use AI platforms as a quick and easy shortcut. Thus, examining strategies to improve writing self-efficacy can be a component in addressing unnecessary AI usage in writers, especially in synchronous appointments. 

Lundin et al. (2023) identify the practice of empathy-based tutoring, a style of tutoring that emphasizes the needs of the writer, and the four different strategies used consistently throughout writing center appointments that were seen to contribute to the improvement of writing self-efficacy. These strategies can be seen to reflect or be similar to some of our Writing Center Core Practices! 

LISTENING

Listening is a significant component of promoting the writing self-efficacy of individuals, as it allows writers to feel understood and less anxious about their writing. Through listening, tutors can actively address the concerns of the writer by asking the writer their goals and intentions of the appointment; engaging in this process can ultimately promote the writer’s sense of agency, which is an important component in writing self-efficacy. When encountering unprompted AI usage, a tutor may find it helpful to ask questions about the writer’s needs and create a plan to achieve the writer’s overall goals.

TRANSLATING

As writers often struggle with putting their thoughts into words, “translating” is a beneficial practice to address this. A tutor “translating” for a writer allows the writer to verbalize their ideas and have it be organized into points that can be written down. Lundin et al. (2023) state that translation “acknowledges and affirms the value of the student’s ideas by helping them to find and express the best words within the given rhetorical context.” Tutors adopting the role of translating allow the writer to verbalize and organize their thoughts and, more importantly, understand the process of being able to communicate their own ideas into their writing. Demonstrating how writers can translate and communicate their ideas into writing can build confidence and determination towards creating original written works.

ADVISING

When writers are provided concrete, instructional feedback and actionable steps during appointments, they become more confident in their writing and increase their sense of writing self-efficacy. According to the authors, those who attend writing center appointments feel much more prepared and have a heightened sense of self-efficacy when given general feedback that includes strategies for writing effectively on the current assignment as well as future assignments. Further, tutors who regularly check in on the writer and their understanding of the advised suggestions are also helpful in increasing writing self-efficacy. Being able to give substantial and relevant suggestions to writers can improve their writing confidence and ultimately decrease the pull toward using AI.

MOTIVATING

Finally, being able to motivate a writer in their work is one of the most important aspects of empathy-based tutoring. Motivating a writer can include asking questions, collaborating, and seeking to empower the writer in their ideas. Tutors engaging in motivating the writer by being an empathetic, helpful presence to the writer can help the writer perceive their writing concerns as manageable and encourage them to face writing challenges rather than avoid them. 

Final Thoughts

If you’re a tutor at any writing center, there’s a likely chance you will encounter AI usage during appointments. I wanted to create this blog piece not to act as if I have all the answers as to why people use AI platforms or how to eradicate AI usage but to present a thoughtful way to approach unnecessary AI usage during appointments, using different strategies found in research. As previously mentioned, these strategies I present from Lundin et al. (2023) are reminiscent of our own Writing Center Core Practices, and using these strategies in the context of AI usage can be beneficial for tutors who find themselves in these types of situations and seek to promote writing self-efficacy! The research and strategies presented in this blog are simple tools to how we, as tutors, can approach the growing use of AI within our writing centers and build confidence in the writers that come to us. 

References

Lundin, I. M., O’Connor, V., & Perdue, S. W. (2023). The Impact of Writing Center Consultations on Student Writing Self-Efficacy. The Writing Center Journal, 41(2), 7–25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27262713