Since January 2023, the CCCC/MLA Joint Task Force on AI and Writing has responded to new developments in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), especially as it has shaped college writing classrooms. Over the past two years, the Joint Task Force collaborated on several resources such as working papers to guide educators and support local and national conversations about the role of GenAI in policy and practice, blog posts on various topics, workshops, webinars, student resources, and a site for AI teaching experiments. Through curating these resources, the Joint Task Force has done the important work of taking stock of the current state of the issue; considering implications for teachers, students, organizations and scholars; pushing forward conversations; and mapping out directions for future work. The group has now completed its charges and sunset, with each organization having formed groups specific to their membership. We are grateful to the CCCC appointees to the Joint Task Force—Kofi Adisa, Antonio Byrd, David Green, Holly Hassel, Sarah Z. Johnson, and Alexandria Lockett—and to the MLA for initiating this effort. We look forward to future collaborations on issues of shared importance.
To continue these efforts, CCCC has launched a Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition and Writing Studies. This Special Committee is charged with identifying and developing a set of deliverables to roll out over the next three years intended to guide how rhetoric, composition, and writing studies teacher-scholars, students, and administrators think through the question of GenAI in the profession. To do so, the Special Committee will consider: (1) the impacts and implications of GenAI especially as related to our professional practices, e.g., research, teaching, publication, theory-building, public and community engagement, hiring, peer review, and editorial work; and (2) what members of our discipline need to navigate these issues, keeping in mind how factors like labor, disability, language diversity, access, and other ethical concerns must be taken into consideration.
The members of the Special Committee on GenAI include teacher-scholars and writing program administrators from a range of institution types including but not limited to two-year colleges, technical colleges, research intensive universities, and minority-serving institutions who have expertise in a variety of areas of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, including pedagogy, rhetorics, digital composing and writing technologies, literacy, labor, professional development, technical communication, TESOL, user experience, writing assessment and placement, writing centers, and writing program administration. Members also include CCCC appointees to the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force in an effort to ensure a smooth transition across groups. The members of the CCCC Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition and Writing Studies are:
Kofi Adisa, Howard Community College
Michael Black, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Antonio Byrd, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Dana Driscoll, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Maggie Fernandes, University of Arkansas
David Green, Howard University
Holly Hassel (Co-Chair), Michigan Technological University
Sarah Z. Johnson, Madison Area Technical College
Carmen Kynard, Texas Christian University
Megan McIntyre, University of Arkansas
Patti Poblete, South Puget Sound Community College
Jennifer Sano-Franchini (Co-Chair), West Virginia University
Please stay tuned for updates, and contact cccc with ideas, suggestions, or questions