Hey folks,
Forgive the cross-post, but I know many of the folks on this list are working on projects related to the impact of GenAI on student writing, and I wanted to promote a significant resource that I have and am happy to share: the corpus of student writing collected through Carleton’s sophomore portfolio program.
Every Carleton student is required to submit 3-5 pieces of writing from their Carleton classes at the end of their sophomore year, along with the original assignment prompts and a reflective essay written just for the portfolio. These artifacts are all tagged with the subject and term they were written and accessible via a database going back to 2017, and they’re covered by a broad IRB that allows both internal and external researchers to use them (we have precedent for both).
Given that this database conveniently stretches back before both the pandemic and the arrival of GenAI, I can imagine numerous projects that could draw on it (some of them, ironically, powered by AI), and there’s no way I’ll imagine or get to them all. If anyone has a project in mind that might make use of Carleton’s portfolio database, please reach out and I’d be happy to discuss it!
Since this post feels a little solicitous, I should stress that I have no commercial interest here, and my only professional interest is in promoting scholarship that might help us all understand and adjust to the ways student writing is changing.
Best,
George
Dr. George Cusack
Director of Academic AI Initiatives
Director of Writing Across the Curriculum
Senior Lecturer in English
Weitz Center for Creativity, Rm 124
Carleton College
One North College Street
Northfield, MN 55057
gcusack