Two faculty members teaching Expository Writing 20, a required first-year class run by the Harvard University Writing Program, experimented with limited use of artificial intelligence chatbots within their curriculum.
The Expos 20 course has been required since 1872, but with the advent of generative artificial intelligence tools, the classic course is being adapted.
Expos 20: “The Ruling Class” preceptor James Herron designed a course-specific chatbot to help students “refine their arguments and make them more persuasive.” . This chatbot is trained based on class reading material.
“What they are asked to do is type their paper into the chatbot,” Herron said. “What the chatbot does is provide four plausible counterarguments to their theory.”
“I scripted most of what I would tell the students,” Herron said. “So what the AI is really doing is creating possible counterarguments for students.”
Jane Rosenzweig, leader of Expos 20: “The Problems ChatGPT Can Solve,” also piloted a similar chatbot.
“Chatbots really want to write papers for you, so we’re trying to strike a balance,” she said.
Rosenzweig added that expository writing classes aren’t the only courses piloting these customized chatbots.
“There are some really interesting experiments going on elsewhere at Harvard,” she said. “The physics department piloted chatbots for our important intro physics class, and we think they will prove useful in different ways in different departments.”
Students said they had mixed feelings about incorporating AI into expository writing classes.
Isaac B. Hertenstein ’28, a student in Mr. Herron’s class, said that using ChatGPT to come up with ideas is “not the best idea.”
“I think that’s inaccurate and undermines the humanity of the writing and what your ideas are and how to discuss them effectively,” he said.
But Hartenstein added that the benefits of AI can be seen later in the writing stage, when “arguments and counter-arguments have already been created.”
Cleo N. Carney, 28, another student in Herron’s course, said she believes allowing the use of AI in the classroom will allow many students to do what they were already doing. I did.
“At the end of the day, everyone uses it, whether they say they use it or not,” she says. “So now that the cat is out of the box, I don’t think it makes sense for Harvard or any school to say, ‘Well, we can’t use that at all.'”
Herron said many of the students are “more familiar with these technologies” than he is, and he values their opinions. He said he and Rosenzweig are still experimenting with these “relatively new” technologies.
“We’re trying to learn how to use them in a productive and helpful way, but that’s still a work in progress,” he added.
