Last week, we sat down with Professor John Turner and Dr. Cynthia Johnson, co-facilitators of the Rethinking College Writing in an AI Era FLC, to learn about how their group is equipping MSU faculty members to take on one of the biggest turning points in modern education history: the rise of AI.

It’s the elephant in nearly any room you enter these days, especially in academic settings. The steady rise of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few years has excited some, horrified others, and caused a major foundational shift for all. This year, AI is in the hands of more people—and more students—than ever before. Hundreds of new AI tools flood the market daily, offering assistance with everything from data compilation and analysis to drafting literature reviews and emails. Major companies like Microsoft and Google include AI assistants and summary tools that have transformed the function of their products, and people are even increasingly turning to chatbots like ChatGPT for basic tasks like creating a grocery list or writing birthday card messages.

For a technology that is becoming so omnipresent, there’s quite a bit of inconsistency in how people view its use—mainly, when (or if) it’s even acceptable to do so. Plenty of educators have strong opinions about that predicament, and their answers are far from unanimous. To make matters worse, the AI space, mostly unregulated, is evolving at a speed that makes it nearly impossible for instructors to even know what new tools are being offered, much less how they should be used educationally. The resulting chaos leaves some instructors feeling overwhelmed, which can lead to an avoidance of AI tools (or even discussion about them) altogether.

In this time of intense discourse and mild technological chaos, two MSU faculty members have made it their mission to create a space for faculty to have intellectual conversations about the sudden societal and educational shift they find themselves in. Professor John Turner, Senior Instructor in the English Department, and Dr. Cynthia Johnson, Assistant Professor in the English Department and Director of Composition, established their FLC, Rethinking College Writing in an AI Era, in spring of this year. The group’s goal is to provide educators with the time and space they need to discuss the high-speed technological changes they are encountering and how they plan to respond to them. “This is such a rapidly evolving technology that is touching every aspect of our lives,” Dr. Johnson explained. “There just has to be an intellectual space for unpacking it as it’s happening.” The resulting group (and the very needed conversations that are coming out of it) is providing a shining example of how educators can begin to navigate this new and daunting era.

Starting the Conversation

The idea for the Rethinking College Writing in an AI Era FLC came to Professor Turner after watching the explosion of AI hit universities across the country and the fallout that came after. The situation was undeniably complicated; as the availability and accessibility of AI tools grew exponentially over the past few years, universities across the country were forced to establish rules and guidelines on a shifting technology that was too complex for a simple yes or no. To make things even more difficult, AI technology had both strong opponents and supporters among educators. Some within the academic space swore by the potential AI held to assist in learning, while others were convinced that AI technology harkened the downfall of higher education as we knew it. Any decision made on the degree that AI was allowed to contribute to educational activities was bound to cause debate—and quickly did.

As universities struggled to provide sufficient answers to the questions raised by AI, Professor Turner was watching these responses and the debates they sparked take place online. In some of the online spaces that educators frequent, conversations were being had over whether AI constituted cheating, and few agreements were being reached. While some of the participants in these discussions had reasonable views, there were also some who had more extreme takes, signifying the divide that was quickly forming on AI inclusion in the classroom. People couldn’t seem to agree on exactly what AI’s role was in education, especially in writing. Soon enough, these conversations started popping up in person on MSU’s campus as well.

“I was teaching an ethics class in my program, and I had a student who had written in a discussion board post about ethics. [They] said, ‘I don’t think it’s right that my instructor is using AI to create class materials, but they’re telling us that we can’t use it at all.’ Things like that started cropping up enough to say, maybe we can get together and have a conversation to figure out what we are doing with this.” Professor Turner explained. The murky nature of AI usage was causing some friction—which was only likely to intensify with the speed everything was progressing at. “It was something that was moving so rapidly that it was necessary to step out of the movement of it and talk about what’s going on,” Professor Turner explained.

In order for educators to slow down enough to analyze what was happening around them, they would need a space to join together and discuss. After the idea was conceived, Professor Turner approached Dr. Johnson, and the two aimed to create the place for these important conversations to occur. Thus, Rethinking College Writing in an AI Era was born.

The faculty learning community (FLC)’s primary purpose is to provide a space for MSU faculty to develop a greater understanding of how AI can impact college writing. The meetings help participants sort through the overload of information and offer a much-needed space for them to discuss, debate, and strengthen their views on the use of this technology for writing in classes. “[It’s] an opportunity to refine their thinking about it. Most of them that I’ve heard from have started to figure out how they want to or should use it in their classes, and the FLC helped them to work out some of the logistics and details of it.” Professor Turner explained.

“It’s giving them the space to examine and articulate their views and practices,” Dr. Johnson added. “Whether or not that changes from the time they enter the FLC to the time they leave, they’re going to be able to articulate why they do what they do a lot better, and I think that’s something that’s really valuable with something like this.”

 

Bridging the AI Divide

Even though the group is focused on the discussion of AI in college writing, it is not a crash course in what instructors should do with it, because there’s no real consensus on the right way to handle it. AI usage has remained a controversial topic throughout its increasing prevalence; the dizzying mix of personal beliefs, opinions, concerns, and the vastly different ways that AI is used in different fields of study means that almost no one’s viewpoint on the matter is exactly the same. The FLC is no stranger to this—even Professor Turner and Dr. Johnson themselves have different opinions on AI.

“Two years ago, I stood in front of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning’s Showcase Luncheon […] and I said to the entire room that my first response to AI was, ‘What fresh hell is this?'” Professor Turner said when asked about his personal opinion on AI. “My first reaction was pretty negative—[I thought] ‘okay, it’s over.’ But then the more I looked at it, the more I started to realize it doesn’t have to be over. This is maybe just a moment that we can pivot to think about technology in a different way, think about writing in a different way, think about our process in a different way.” Today, Professor Turner holds a much more favorable viewpoint towards AI than he did that day at the Showcase. “Over time, I’ve become more of an AI defender than I ever expected to be,” he said. “I’m also seeing from my professional field of technical and professional writing that it’s a necessary tool for our students to learn. That’s not true in every field, and it’s not going to be true in every classroom on campus, but for our students it would professionally irresponsible if we didn’t address it.”

“Personally, I don’t love it.” Dr. Johnson answered when asked the same question. “I have a lot of concerns for what it’s doing for literacy, for communities, for the environment, but I also understand that it’s here. That doesn’t mean we need to run and embrace it, but we do have to think realistically about how we’re working with it.” Dr. Johnson’s view towards AI is rooted heavily in her educational field. As an educator teaching rhetoric courses, the nature of AI choosing words for users is a much more problematic aspect to her than it may seem to those in other disciplines. “If you’re using a word in your writing, I want to be able to ask you why you chose that word and the answer to not just be, ‘AI chose it for me,'” she explained. “I want to make sure that even in the ways that we are using it, maybe for idea formation or so on, it’s not taking away our own intention in writing.”

“I have a lot of concerns for what [AI is] doing for literacy, for communities, for the environment, but I also understand that it’s here. That doesn’t mean we need to run and embrace it, but we do have to think realistically about how we’re working with it.” – Dr. Cynthia Johnson

With how charged a lot of the conversation around AI can be, the differing viewpoints of the facilitators may seem like a roadblock. “Cynthia tells me that I’m all in,” Professor Turner joked—to which Dr. Johnson replied with a laugh, “And I’m not.” The discord is far from a negative thing though; in fact, the different perspectives temper one another, allowing the validity from each opinion to be recognized while acknowledging the pitfalls inherent in both. “If you’re listening to someone who’s all in, it’s a healthy conversation to have when you can have someone else going, ‘What about this?'” Professor Turner explained. “I like that our approaches to it differ,” Dr. Johnson added. “Participants aren’t walking into an FLC where the two facilitators have this united opinion that we’re pushing, [and because of that] we have a lot of really good back and forth. It’s shaped my views a lot as we’ve gone along.” This allowance and acknowledgement of different opinions on AI goes a long way towards bridging the divide that entrenches people on either side of the AI issue.

Diverse Perspectives

Dr. Johnson and Professor Turner’s group is comprised of faculty members from varied academic backgrounds and fields of study, which contributes an element of diversity to the group that allows for more nuanced discussions of AI application. These varying viewpoints carry the conversation to deeper and more interesting places, some of which have even surprised the facilitators themselves.

“We have participants from disciplines outside of English [in the FLC],” Dr. Johnson mentioned. “The two of us are both in the English department, so for me it has been so interesting just hearing about how these fields that maybe don’t feel the same responsibility to writing are approaching writing and AI in those classes.” The different fields and disciplines represented in the FLC showcase some of the varied approaches across our campus community, and allow them a space to be shared, interrogated, and strengthened. It’s not only different fields that are represented in the FLC, though; instructors addressing different levels of education altogether are apart of the conversation, too.

“Last year we had a dual credit instructor who arranged with his high school to be able to come to our sessions,” Professor Turner added. “So, we also got insight into what’s happening before [students] get to college. That was really eye-opening.” Even though the participants of the FLC have different experiences with and perspectives on AI, the same concern has brought them all together—the need to address this new technology in some way, and the desire for a space to discuss what that addressing looks like for them. The participants may each come away from the group with different opinions and policies on AI integration, but through their discussions, they all prevent what is perhaps the most dangerous pitfall of ignoring the technology in academic spaces: unchecked AI usage from students who don’t have a framework for ethical use.

“If we didn’t address it, that’s not going to keep students from using it.” Professor Turner explained. “So, I think that the best way [to deal with it] is to be proactive with it, and have the conversation about how you can use it.” Ignoring AI usage altogether, he said, could lead to even more issues. “Left to their own devices, [students] may use it in really inappropriate ways. Not because they’re trying to commit some form of academic dishonesty, but because they just aren’t aware of other ways they could use it.” Instructors have the opportunity to intervene in this process through guiding students in ethical and intentional AI use instead of letting them run wild with the technology. “With anything, especially technology, if you self-train you’re not necessarily going to learn the best ways to use it.”

A Guiding Light

So, if the opinions of educators on AI are doomed to eternal complication, how do we make sure we don’t go too far? Once we’ve established that there are no hard rules that can be used to govern AI usage across the board, how do we keep ourselves in check? How can we stop ourselves from getting swept away in an endless sea of whataboutisms?

“We presented at Showcase over the summer, and one of the things we talked about was a point of consensus that we came to in the group last spring,” Dr. Johnson explained. “We all have different perspectives and different disciplines and we’re coming at [this] from different ways, but we landed on an acronym that applies to all of us – which is the TIE acronym.” The TIE acronym stands for the three guiding principles that the group has agreed to keep central to AI usage: transparency, intentionality, and ethics.

Transparency, paramount to maintaining the integrity of a text being produced in tandem with AI, encourages users to clearly identify exactly how AI was used when creating text. Whether it’s ideas, structure, organization, or editing suggestions, citing the applications of AI in a piece of writing honestly and completely helps prevent the act of accidental plagiarism.

Intentionality asks instructors to be deliberate and thoughtful in their application of AI. No matter what an individual’s line is with AI, the intention behind that line’s existence should be clear. “You can have any opinion you want about the AI in your own classroom, and what you want to [do with it], and what your values are about it, but we want to make sure that you’re asking all the right questions.” Professor Turner explained. “[We also want to make sure] that as you’re making decisions, you’re understanding your decision doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You have to put it into this larger perspective of the university education for students and what the expectations are for them, not only in their classes but moving outside the university and into their careers.”

Ethics, meanwhile, asks instructors to concern themselves with the ethical implications of the technology they use and how they encourage (or discourage) students to use it. This connotates a broader understanding not only of how to use AI, but also when it is appropriate to do so—and the willingness to have these ethical considerations govern the use of AI technology. The TIE acronym provides a framework for educators to function within while they navigate their own personal usage and policy on AI, as well as a guideline that can function as a compass for directing students in how they use AI in the classroom and beyond. “We decided that no matter what we’re doing with AI in the classroom, or how students are using it, we want to encourage those three things.” Dr. Johnson concluded.

“You can have any opinion you want about the AI in your own classroom, and what you want to [do with it], and what your values are about it, but we want to make sure that you’re asking all the right questions.” – Professor John Turner

Embracing the Challenge

While the FLC is equipping its participants to navigate the educational space in this emerging era of AI, some both in and out of education are still understandably hesitant to open the AI can of worms. As time progresses and technology continues to move at warp-speed though, this hesitancy to confront AI has the potential to become more and more of a problem—especially because instructors have a great degree of autonomy in how they choose to regulate its usage in their classrooms. No response to the new technology arguably has the same effect as a bad response.

“Missouri State’s done something really well in terms of policy, which is that [the university] is not trying to implement a one-size-fits-all policy. Because the disciplines are so different, and the use of AI across disciplines is also going to be very different, it’s really impossible to come up with [that].” Professor Turner explained. “I really appreciate the flexibility that we have here, but then it also shifts that back to faculty and puts the burden on [them] to kind of figure things out.” That freedom to implement AI in classrooms as instructors see valid applications for it is essential to the success and preparation of students campus-wide, but it also necessitates that faculty rise to the challenge of addressing it themselves. That task can seem daunting; a feeling that Dr. Johnson acknowledged when discussing the tendency to ignore AI.

“I would say I get it, first of all,” she said when asked what she would say to faculty who are hesitant to address the AI elephant in the room. “This is effecting all of us in big and different ways, and it’s hard, and we’re busy, and it’s difficult to find the time and the space to actually deal with it.” The FLC was created in part to assist in solving that problem, but it’s not the only way faculty can engage in these processes. Getting involved in the AI conversation can happen through many avenues—interacting with groups on campus, diving into discussions online, learning from academic literature on AI, or interacting with discourse in any of the dozens of other places it’s occurring. What’s most important is making sure these discussions take place, no matter where, when, or which end of the AI divide those conversing may occupy. “Creating space for ourselves to be examining why we feel the way we do about it is something that I think we all have a responsibility to do right now.” Dr. Johnson said.

These essential conversations can even happen inside an unexpected space: the classroom. When asked what advice he would give to faculty who have yet to start these conversations, Professor Turner said, “The answer is not that it’s going to go away. […] What it’ll look like in five years or ten years from now is anybody’s guess, but it won’t be that it’s gone.” Once faculty have accepted that AI is here to stay, a collaborative approach alongside students can be surprisingly helpful to tackling its implementation in the classroom. “I think one of the things that instructors are sometimes reluctant to do […] is to have that conversation with their classes. And to say, how are you using AI? What are you thinking about AI? You can admit to your students that you’re learning this, too. What should I know that I don’t? How are you using it in ways that I’m not thinking about? Open that conversation and you’ll learn a lot.”

Whether faculty embrace, question, or cautiously engage with AI, one thing is certain: it demands our attention. The work being done through the Rethinking College Writing in an AI Era FLC is helping MSU educators start those critical conversations, ask the right questions, and guide students toward thoughtful, ethical use of the technology that will play a part in defining the future. The FLC is playing a pivotal role in lighting the path forward for our campus community, providing the essential space for faculty to take time out of their busy schedules to face this new age head on—equipping themselves and their students to face the AI era with confidence, curiosity, and care.

Interested in Starting an FLC?

If you’ve been inspired by Professor Turner and Dr. Johnson’s FLC and have an idea for a group you’d like to start, the FCTL is accepting proposals for Spring 2026 FLCs until October 31, 2025. Look through some of our other current FLCs to get inspired, or check out our step-by-step guide to proposing an FLC to get started with your proposal.