A First-Year Writing Assist From AI

The idea of using artificial intelligence in a writing class might strike some as counterintuitive. English professor Benjamin Breyer — who says he barely turned on a computer in his classroom in the past — thinks otherwise. In fact, he is at the forefront of the quickly evolving technology in higher ed. 

In 2023, when ChatGPT first launched, many of his peers were concerned. The media painted a grim picture. “There were alarmist pieces talking about how easily it was going to lead to rampant plagiarization and how undetectable it was, which is not true,” he says. 

While AI was making headlines, Breyer was also reflecting on some of the challenges of the First-Year Writing course he teaches. Because students come to Barnard with diverse writing backgrounds, he wanted to figure out how he could best address their various needs. He started bouncing ideas off Marko Krkeljas, a senior software and applications developer at Barnard’s Instructional Media and Technology Services. Breyer wondered about creating an e-textbook or some kind of visualizations, and then he said, “‘What about AI?,’” he recalls. “It turned out to be the problem solver that I was looking for.” 

The solution was a set of online tools, Breyer says, “that models the idea of a tutor who helps the student discover her own answers.” 

With support from Barnard’s Fund for Innovation in Teaching and the Columbia provost’s Innovative Course Design Grant, Breyer and Krkeljas built a hypermedia website using AI for his Fall 2024 course to help students “gain greater mastery of some of the core writing skills.” The website — which “adapts to the pace of the learner” — functions like a custom chatbot that responds to input from the students. A series of customized exercises support them as they test out paper topics or craft a thesis. 

“It provides guidance, but in ways that are limited and carefully circumscribed so as to not disempower the student,” says Breyer. 

His class responded enthusiastically. A brain-storming exercise that typically required a good deal of back-and-forth became significantly faster with the help of the website, which was also trained to respond using Breyer’s lesson plans. “It’s giving the same feedback that I would give, but it’s doing it in real time to the students,” says Breyer, who could track analytics to see how often students were engaging with the technology. 

Natalia Becerra ’28 was “iffy” at first about the idea of using AI with coursework but now sees its benefits. “AI can’t give you as much in-depth or personalized information as you would get going to Professor Breyer … but it is kind of like having a personal TA,” she says. 

For Breyer, that is the point. The technology is designed to be a tool — not a substitute for critical thinking or teaching. “We’re not switching to automation — we’re still remaining Barnard in our humanistic focus,” he says. “But we are keeping pace with changes in society.”