This week we will hold our second GenAI CLC meeting of the ’26-’27 academic year. This week we welcome Haley Greer, who will focus her talk on AI Agents in the Writing and Communication Classroom. The GenAI CLC will meet this Wednesday, November 11th, from 1:10 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Ross Hall 215 Conference/Meeting Room. Please see more information about Haley’s talk below.
Title: AI Agents in the Writing and Communication Classroom
Session Overview:
This session covers two types of agents: agents for students and agents by students. The first half looks at what goes into building agents for students, from gathering materials for a knowledge base to writing instructions and setting guardrails. I share examples from my own teaching to show how agents can add pedagogical value (and where they have failed to).
The second half is a workshop on bringing agent design into the writing classroom. When students design an agent, they have to consider its purpose, audience, and limits, which makes the process a natural space for rhetorical situation analysis. User testing and the design process also ask students to think about you-attitude and how to build something for users beyond themselves. Participants will leave with an AI agent they can continue to iterate on, along with ideas for bringing agent design into their own classrooms.
Collaborative Learning Communities:
CLCs are teaching-focused groups. They complement the existing teaching labs. In the GenAI CLC, we meet monthly from October through April to invite guest speakers, to discuss teaching issues and ideas, resources and materials, readings, and more. The CLC provides a longer-term, sustained complement to the teaching labs and a collaborative form of continued professional development.
We hope to see you there!