Teaching Writing in the Age of the Chatbot: Automation, Disruption, and the Role of the University

This paper investigates the challenge posed by Large Language Models (LLMs) to teaching and learning how to write at the post-secondary level, situating LLMs as a form of automation affecting both the labour of educators and the labour-markets our students will enter on graduation. The paper argues that the arrival of the chatbot should spur universities to refocus on process-oriented approaches to writing instruction, which foreground the cognitive labour of writing as a practice of thinking. Understanding what writing is – as a practice rather than a product – is critical to understanding the role we should play as university teachers in relation to LLMs as a form of automation that will displace some, but not all, of the capacities that university-level writing practices are meant to cultivate.