Our university requires School of Engineering students to complete a technical writing course that prepares them for communicating in the professional world. The technical writing course’s modules that sought to teach communication skills were at risk of becoming obsolete if students opted to default to AI queries instead of engaging in a process of critical thinking. Both the student learning outcomes and course objectives are tied to ABET accreditation, so we chose to update the course using a similar top-down approach. Rather than constantly modify the instructional material in a game of cat and mouse to stay ahead of generative AI capabilities, we zoomed out to focus on providing context and framing the instructional material, which could then undergo fewer drastic changes.

Given the course’s instructor and student diversity (e.g., biomedical engineering, computer engineering, environmental engineering), an engineering lecturer and writing specialist collaborated on a decision-making framework that informs the course’s structure and exercises. This framework iterates a process of gathering information, analyzing options, making a decision, and drafting writing. This session will introduce participants to the decision-making framework through a tour of the course materials in Canvas, a learning management system. This will include module introduction pages, which provide context and frame the instructional material. The session will conclude with examples of how students have used the framework explicitly in writing exercises, as well as their feedback from using the framework more broadly throughout the course.