This Week for Faculty: 📚 Teaching students to learn through reading and writing in the age of AI

Articulating the “why” behind reading and writing assignments

When assigning readings and writing tasks in your course, consider sharing with your students:

• Why are these specific readings and writing tasks essential for your course?

• What purpose do your reading and writing assignments serve in student learning?

In his Inside Higher Ed opinion piece “What Is Your Why?” (2025), John Warner, author of More Than Words: How to think about writing in the age of AI (2025) and Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (2018), argues that providing students with a clear rationale for their coursework fosters engagement and helps them see assignments as meaningful learning opportunities. Explicitly articulating the purpose behind readings and writing tasks can deepen students’ motivation and investment in their learning.

Teaching students to learn through writing

Introducing students to disciplinary writing in its various forms is essential, yet it can be challenging to balance how much instruction and guidance is needed, and at what scale. At the same time, the introduction of Generative AI has necessitated new approaches to writing assignments.

Explore the resource

The CTL’s Learning Through Writing in the Age of AI resource looks at why writing activities are beneficial for instructors and students alike, and offers considerations and strategies for writing activities in the age of AI.

Join the conversation

Exploring AI in Teaching and Learning: AI and Writing
March 5, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, online

Do you wonder about assigning writing in the age of AI? Are you curious about how you might leverage different writing activities to support student learning? 

If these are questions that you are grappling with, then join your colleagues and the CTL for a conversational space in which we’ll build upon the CTL’s Learning Through Writing in the Age of AI resource to explore writing assignments, activities, and key considerations in the university classroom.

Teaching students to learn through reading

Reading is crucial to student learning, yet you may find students not completing course readings or struggling with comprehension and deeper engagement. These challenges can be further compounded by tools like Generative AI.

Explore the resource

The CTL’s Learning Through Reading: Strategies to Support Students’ Reading Practices resource presents strategies for instructors facing challenges with course reading assignments, as well as activities they might leverage to increase student engagement and enhance students’ learning through reading in the age of AI.

Looking for more activities that engage students with course readings? Check out the techniques available through The K. Patricia Cross Academy:

• Active Reading Documents guide students through the process of critical reading.

• Fact or Opinion encourages students to critically evaluate information by questioning what they read.

• Quotation Summaries: invite students to comment on quotes from the assigned reading using a structured process: paraphrase, interpret, comment, and cite.

• Insights-Resources-Applications (IRAs): invite students to complete a written response to a reading assignment that includes: insights, connections to resources, and an application.

Join the conversation

Exploring AI in Teaching and Learning: AI and Reading
April 2, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, online

Do you grapple with leverage reading assignments in your course? Are you curious how you might engage students with course readings? Are you wondering how AI is impacting reading practices? 

If these are questions that you are grappling with, then join your colleagues and the CTL for a discussion space in which we’ll build upon the CTL’s Learning Through Reading resource to explore the recent discussions around “the end of reading,” and how AI is impacting our students’ reading practices.

Events this week!

The Columbia Class of 2035: Will We Need to Reinvent Higher Education?
March 4, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Faculty Room in Low Memorial Library.
This workshop is part of the Columbia AI Summit on March 4, 2025.

Exploring AI in Teaching and Learning: AI and Writing
March 5, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Related resource: Learning Through Writing in the Age of AI 

Science of Learning Research Initiative (SOLER) Journal Club
March 6, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, online
Article to be discussed: Empowering students’ voices: The use of activity-oriented focus groups in higher education research (Bourne & Winstone, 2021).

The CTL is here to help!

Connect via Zoom or over the phone
Join us for office hours via Zoom (or phone) Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm to have your teaching with instructional technology questions answered.

Schedule a consultation
Schedule an in-person or virtual consultation to discuss any teaching and learning need by emailing ctlfaculty@columbia.edu or email the CTL Learning Designer assigned to your school or department.