Guide To Teaching and Learning

Emmanuel Cohen

Generative AI in Teaching, for Parsons First-Year Integrated Seminar 1

Integrative Seminar 1 awakens the possibilities of writing as an exciting, dynamic source of inspiration. It can be an experimental space full of play and invention. It can be a formal and rigorous space for debate, as well as a tool used to process, explore, express or reflect, as students discuss how writing acts as a voice, a catalyst for change, and conveys emotion.

Faculty Reflection

The implementation of AI was designed as a semester-long process with incremental complexity, both in terms of the software used and the ethical and theoretical questions raised, starting with basic tools (Autocomplete on phones and Gmail) to advanced technologies (Google Lab’s experiments, ChatGPT, AdobeFirefly). A lecture by a former employee from Google Arts and Culture addressed the history of AI, and current risks and benefits of generative AI technologies.

Including AI for the first time in a writing and research based class felt intimidating as I did not want to have students rely on AI too much before experimenting with writing by themselves, without the support or intermediary of the machine. That is why I took the slightly different approach inspired by Kenneth Goldsmith about creativity and originality. Having the machine introduced as an object to scrutinize, analyze, play with and challenge felt like the right way to do so for me, in the context of Parsons Paris where individuality and authentic creativity are valued by students.

Curriculum and Student Projects

Project 1: Autocomplete Poetry

For this activity, students as a class were asked to think about the impact of habits and technology on their ability to observe and connect with their environment (this was loosely inspired by the work of John A. MacArthur on digital proxemics). To do so, students were asked to create an “automatic” poem about the new location they were in (Parsons Paris).

Guidelines were the following:
1. Come up collectively with a similar phrase to start the poem;
2. Open Message on your phone, pick a conversation and type the phrase (ex.: “ In Paris”)
3. Only pick suggestions from Autocomplete to fill in the poem until you decide to stop.
4. Share results on a previously shared GoogleDoc
5. Read and discuss: what are some of the similarities and differences between the poems? How did the use of technology impact the content of your poem? How were words chosen? Who holds the creative agency, Autocomplete or you?

Learning Outcomes:

Think critically about writing as a form of communication
Think critically about the impact of technology on writing (and different systems such as semantic-filling, probability completion etc.
Experiment with machine-based technologies to create and write
Question creative making in the context of machine-supported making and writing

Project 2: Tone Experiment

In order to bring students to think about authorship and voice, we used the second assignment (a portrait of their peers) to experiment with genres, writing styles, and voice. The structure of the activity was:

Analysis of a text to identify the writing features that convey the authorial voice (choice of words, syntax, idiosyncratic expressions, connection with a genre). Followed by class discussion.
Short lecture on authorial voice in writing, and presentation of Exercises of Style by Raymond Queneau, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, and excerpts from manuals by Julio Cortazar,
Students use a paragraph from a draft they had written and they found lacking in “voice” to experiment with ChatGPT:
List the elements you would like to emulate: tone, content through specialized vocabulary, length of sentences etc.
Prompt ChatGPT to make the changes for you. Create 3 to 5 versions playing with different prompts
Print and analyze the different versions. What added / changed elements do you think convey your concept the best? Categorize them in terms of vocabulary, syntax, stylistic devices…
Share the ChatGPT results and your analysis with your faculty.

Learning Outcomes:

Experiment with writing as a form of communication involving both human-to-human (literary output) and human-to-machine (prompts) exchanges.
Think critically about writing as a form of communication involving both human-to-human (literary output) and human-to-machine (prompts) exchanges.
Learn about tones of voice and authorship through text manipulation
Experiment with machine-based technologies to create and write

Project 3: Style Enhancer

In the same vein as the Tone experiment exercise above, I used TextFX to ask students to revise a piece of writing they did. Because of the interface and more intentional choices asked to be done, it was broken down into more steps and based on a prompt inspired by theater director Anne Bogart about creative work.
Students write between 3 and 6 “remarkable things” in lines on a piece of paper.
This activity could also be introduced by Neri Oxman’s text, “Once I Was Lost, but Now I Am Found, or How to Navigate in the Chartroom of Memory”

American Theater and Opera Director Anne Bogart wrote in her book On Collaboration: instead of description (plain and not addressed to a reader), writers should use 2 techniques: compression and distillation. The reader will easily make up a story in their mind of what is supposed to happen once the setting is set, so the job of the writer is to anticipate this story and surprise the reader with unexpected points of view, events, and stylistic proposals. In doing so, the writer shrinks down some passages (less exciting) and distillates others. When compressing a passage, the author is still given an opportunity to enhance the pleasure the reader has by working on their style, reinforcing the inner cohesion of the text (either through sounds or semantic connections), and sometimes announcing what is to come in an unexpected way (using simile, scenes – more picturesque approaches that set up the tone and point of view)

Goals:
Learn writerly techniques to both compress and distillate your texts in order to gain in expression and style.
Lear how to use elements of description to build up your personal vision and voice.
Learn about TextFX and text GenAI technologies at a beginner level. Activity breakdown:

1. Students take one image, scene, etc. and name 3 things that stand out to them that they would like to incorporate in their memoir. For one of the remarkable things they identified, they describe it in 1 sentence. Using this sentence as a starting point, they will work on distillation.
2. (5 minutes) Without any external help, they need to “distill” it by expanding on it. Collect their results and impressions: what strategies did they or others use to “distill” the element they picked?
3. (5 minutes) Collective Debrief Help them identify writing techniques and their meaning/impact on the reader.
4. (5 minutes) Introduce TextFX and the following tools. Tools for Distillation: explode, unexpect, POV, Acronym, scene
5. (10 minutes): Ask students to pick 1 tool (Unexpect may not be appropriate in the context of this assignment, not Scene) and experiment with it: how can they expand on their initial idea? What do they gain from using it? Are there any limitations they see? Show them the interface and ask them to pin the results they are thinking of using.
6. (5 minutes): Collective Debrief.
7. Trying out compression
8. Repeat steps 2, 3, 5 and 6 about an element or passage of their memoir they want to “compress”.

Learning Outcomes:

Experiment with writing as a form of communication involving both human-to-human (literary output) and human-to-machine (prompts) exchanges.
Think critically about writing as a form of communication involving both human-to-human (literary output) and human-to-machine (prompts) exchanges.
Learn about tones of voice and authorship through text manipulation
Experiment with machine-based technologies to create and write