Understandably there is a lot of talk around AI tutors as a way of designing a new interaction layer on AI that shapes its processes of predictive continuation toward pedagogy rather than helpfulness. Or something like that, in a nutshell. If we envision AI tutors as attached to a discipline or a particular course, then…
Keep readingI’ve written a few times recently on the concept of friction(less) pedagogy and learning in relation to AI. At the end of Rhetorics of the Digital Nonhumanities, I devote a chapter to pedagogical design, particularly in relation to Rittel and Webber’s wicked design problems. For a number of years, EDUCAUSE’s Horizon Report employed this concept.…
Keep readingYes, the AI is jammed in there. This is the May 2026 edition. It is interesting to see how our views develop on these matters. I know mine have shifted. Frontier AI’s has created a great deal of cultural instability, particularly in relation to higher education. Gen AI fundamentally undermined how students learn and faculty…
Keep readingLast month at the Conference for College Composition and Communication, the national conference in the discipline of rhetoric and composition, the following resolution was passed “we affirm the rights of students and teachers to refuse to sign up for, prompt, or otherwise use generative AI in the writing classroom.” The resolution articulates several concerns that I would…
Keep readingThe question is do we want a “more clear/communicative” version of Deleuze and Guattari? How about ourselves? We wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was already multiple, there was always a crowd. We drew on whatever came within range—what was nearest as well as what was farthest. We used pseudonyms to avoid recognition. Why, then, did…
Keep readingI’ve been asked to discuss CCCC’s recent resolution on the right to refuse AI. I have already written about it here. From my perspective, this particular resolution is an academic freedom issue within a single discipline and largely focused on one kind of course: first-year composition. As this course is often taught by adjuncts, graduate…
Keep reading“Teaching for Transfer” is an operative concept in rhetoric and composition studies that address the concern that the learning experiences of first-year composition courses be transferable to future academic and/or professional writing contexts. It is not a concept without critics, but I would describe it as deeply embedded in disciplinary best practices. Following the basic…
Keep readingWhen we are refusing AI, what are we refusing? A CS field? A commercial product? An ideology? A story? And what does AI refuse of us? What does the higher ed story of AI refuse of us and our students?
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Alex Reid, Professor of Digital Rhetoric, Media, and Artificial Intelligence