Issue 3: Navigating AI with Writers

& Collaboratively Setting an Agenda

message from editor

Like writing, tutoring is often less about certainty and more about possibility. Instead of relying on absolutes, tutoring embraces options. In this third issue of Center Moves, contributors leaned into the idea of tutoring writing as navigating choices and negotiating priorities, particularly when assisting writers using generative AI or when collaboratively setting an agenda for a tutoring session. This issue offers training materials that are principle-driven and practical, allowing readers to apply these materials to their own contexts and to extend complex and everyday conversations about what it means to tutor writers and writing.

As generative AI increasingly become part of writing and tutoring writing, all three contributors addressing this topic provide trainings that both ask big questions and offer practical application. Jessica Craig invites tutors to consider and experiment with the affordances and limitations of both AI and human tutoring through a metacognitive lens. Chloe Crull encourages tutors to help writers understand and embrace agency and ownership when working with AI. Maria Partida seeks to empower tutors by helping them understand and leverage AI when working with writers. 

Our three other contributors provided lessons focused on collaboratively setting an agenda within a tutoring session. While negotiating an agenda may seem like a simple tutoring task, our contributors point out the many layers that inform this essential work. Madison Kooba's asynchronous training module encourages tutors to understand collaboratively setting an agenda with a writer as a social task that requires strategy and shared priorities. Maureen McBride and Allie Hamilton provide lesson materials to assist tutors in gathering the information needed for tutors and writers to determine the direction of a consultation. 

This third issue of Center Moves is an invitation to better understand tutoring as the work of helping writers and learners navigate and negotiate the known and the new. For those training and mentoring tutors, we hope you and your tutors use these materials to both embrace and reimagine the familiar processes of tutoring, writing, and learning. 

Lisa Bell
Utah Valley University

lesson plans

Click on the titles of the lesson plans below to reach the lesson plan overview page and complete lesson plan materials.

Topic: Training Tutors to Navigate AI with Writers

Submissions for this theme centered on helping tutors engage with AI in their consultations, whether by using AI to support their writers or by working with writers who are using AI to write.

Evaluating an Interface: Metacognitive Approaches to AI and Tutoring

Jessica Craig, Utah Valley University

Given the growing advertisements of AI as a viable replacement for human tutors, demonstrating the differences between AI and human tutoring emphasizes the importance of humanity in tutorials and shows tutors productive methods of engaging with AI. This discussion-based lesson experiments with using AI as a tutor throughout the writing process. Using tutorial scenarios and follow-up prompts, trainers engage with a generative AI to test its limitations and capabilities as a tutor. After the experiments, tutors and trainers critically respond to the AI program’s outputs by comparing it to their responses and experiences as tutors. Aiming to help tutors feel comfortable navigating AI during tutorials, the critical thinking exercises in this lesson can also supplement tutors’ skills in textual evaluation. By emphasizing the importance of redirection and human connection during tutorials, this lesson helps tutors to appropriately intervene when using AI, which can be passed on through tutor-writer conversations.

Writer Agency and Ownership in the Era of Generative AI

Chloe V. R. Crull, University of California, Davis 

This lesson plan prepares writing center tutors to help writers maintain agency and ownership when using generative AI tools. Through structured discussions and scenario-based activities, tutors explore the complex relationship between AI assistance and writer autonomy. Drawing on Warschauer et al.'s (2023) research on AI's impact on language learning, participants analyze how privilege and access influence AI tool usage while developing practical strategies for helping writers leverage AI without surrendering intellectual ownership. The training emphasizes identifying moments of diminished agency and provides concrete techniques for helping writers reclaim ownership of their work. The lesson includes small group discussions and opportunities to develop targeted approaches for common AI-related tutoring scenarios. 

Empowering Tutors for the Future: Navigating GAI to Elevate Student Writing 

Maria Partida, Laredo College  

Recent studies highlight the transformative role of generative AI (GAI) in writing education. This lesson plan equips writing tutors with strategies to effectively integrate AI into tutoring sessions. Objectives include familiarizing tutors with AI resources to enhance their practices, addressing ethical considerations in using AI tools with students, and applying GAI constructively throughout the writing process. By leveraging AI technologies responsibly, tutors can support dynamic, efficient, and personalized student learning experiences. This approach ensures tutors are prepared to adapt to evolving educational technologies while upholding ethical standards. Ultimately, the lesson plan fosters a robust framework for integrating AI tools into tutoring, enhancing instructional support and meeting the demands of modern education. 

Topic: Training Tutors to Collaboratively Establish an Agenda

Submissions for this theme are designed to prepare tutors to set expectations for and create a plan at the start of the consultation.

Assessing the Writing and the Writer

Madison Kooba, University of Oregon 

A central job of being a consultant is helping a writer understand what is and is not working well in their writing. This means that consultants have to develop skills to assess both pieces of writing and their writers, who come to sessions with varying writing experience and dispositions. In this asynchronous session, consultants start with a short reading, reflection, and video to learn about how developing rapport with writers shapes the session. They practice strategies to identify more and less successful elements in a piece of writing and to prioritize which are most important to address in a consultation. They conclude with a final brief video overviewing what this assessment process should look like when starting a consultation. Through this session, consultants examine hypothetical scenarios, pieces of writing, and prompts to apply their learning and gain practice before working with actual writers.

Training for Clarity & Depth During Agenda Setting: Applications for Asynchronous, Synchronous Video, and In-Person Sessions 

Maureen McBride & Allie Hamilton, University of Nevada, Reno

This training activity focuses on how to help consultants/tutors gather more detailed information during the agenda-setting process to enhance the support and guidance they are able to provide to students. Materials in this lesson include a list of discussion/reflection questions that can be used in-person or adapted to asynchronous online learning modules, scenarios, and three PowerPoints: two for differentiation and one for digging deeper. 

ISSUE 3 Submissions Editor

Erin Zimmerman, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

ISSUE 3 REVIEWERS & Guest Editors

Erik Echols, University of Washington, Bothel

Melody Denny, St. Lawrence University

ISSUE 3 Editors

Lisa Bell, Utah Valley University
Juli Parrish, University of Denver
Olivia Tracy, University of Denver