Professional Writing – Composing in the Age of GenAI

Composing in the Age of GenAI

GenAI and Professional Writing

Given how quickly GenAI is changing the workplace, instructors of professional writing must quickly reckon with how to prepare students for the new work environment. Departments may keep the same learning outcomes, but we must rethink what skills and knowledge students will need to meet those outcomes.

For example, GenAI intervenes in three of the four major learning outcomes for UAB’s Introduction to Professional Writing Course (#s 1, 2, and 4). Students must learn about GenAI if, by the end of the semester, we want them to:

Understand the landscape of professional writing as a discipline/field of work
Understand the rhetoric and ethics of professional writing and information design
Know the basic characteristics/features of several genres of professional documents (emails, instructions, reports, newsletters, etc. with emphasis on visual design and visual representations of data)
Have an awareness of the process of composing several genres of professional documents

This site offers classroom activities, readings, assignments, and more that attempt to help students gain practical knowledge about GenAI and its uses in professional writing. Specifically, these resources begin to:

Contextualize for students the way professional writing is changing not just in the workplace but also as a field of study
Prompt students to reflect on the ethical challenges GenAI poses in the workplace and to the field
Help students build GenAI into their own writing processes in helpful, effective, and ethical ways

Unless otherwise indicated, the resources on this page represent the evolving work of Dr. Meagan E. Malone. Many of the ideas here come from the work of and conversations with Amy Cates, Dr. Lilian Mina, and Dr. Danny Siegel. The resources and ideas do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Birmingham at Alabama.