Ep04 - A New Hope [for AI in College Writing]

How do we teach writing in the age of ChatGPT? On My Robot Teacher, hosts Taiyo Inoue and Sarah Senk talk with Carl Whithaus (Professor of Writing & Rhetoric; Director, University Writing Program, UC Davis) and Aparna Sinha (Associate Professor of Composition & Rhetoric, Cal Poly Maritime) about how AI is reshaping the composition classroom, and how educators can use LLMs to support critical thinking, metacognition, and student agency without flattening student voice.Key topics include:AI Literacy: Why teaching AI is like teaching sex ed: avoidance only creates more problems.Process Over Product: Designing meaningful writing assignments that keep students invested.Reflection & Metacognition: Helping students evaluate AI feedback, spot bias, and make informed choices.The Future of Writing: From interdisciplinarity to multimodal literacies in a possible “post-literate” world.00:00-2:51 Chapter 1 - Why Meaningful Assignments Beat AI Shortcuts2:52-17:38 Chapter 2 - AI Literacy is the New Sex Ed17:39-30:15 Chapter 3 - Foundational Skills30:16-36:44 Chapter 4 - Why Writing Still Matters (and how to make it Mean Something)36:45-41:40 Chapter 5 - Can We Imagine a Post-Literate non-Dystopian World?🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-robot-teacher/id1818032413📝 Read full transcripts + extras: https://calearninglab.substack.com/s/my-robot-teacher-podcast🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai📨 Email us!  We’d love to hear from you!  [email protected] us on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrobotteacher/YouTube: youtube.com/@myrobotteacherX: x.com/myrobotteacherBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myrobotteacher.bsky.socialFacebook: facebook.com/myrobotteacherTags/ Keywords: AI in education, AI writing tools, teaching with AI, AI literacy, critical thinking, equity in education, composition pedagogy, code-meshing, ChatGPT in the classroom, higher education podcast, college writing, ChatGPT, generative AI, teaching and learning, peer feedback, UC Davis University Writing Program, Cal Poly Maritime Academy, PAIRR, California Education Learning Lab, Carl Whithaus, Aparna Sinha, Taiyo Inoue, Sarah Senk, My Robot Teacher, future of learning, editaudio