English course redesign focuses on AI, student retention

Using Miller Fellowship* ($49,200) and strategic plan ($24,000) funds, English department faculty reshaped the ISUComm foundation courses, ENGL 1500 and 2500, during the past year. The courses, which all students are required to take, focus on the critical thinking, communication and composition skills that serve students during their academic careers and beyond.

English associate professor and ISUComm foundation courses director Lesley Bartlett led a redesign of the courses this summer to add lessons using artificial intelligence (AI). It was the largest effort to remake the foundation courses in English department chair Volker Hegelheimer's six years.

"It allowed us to promote shared ownership of the curriculum and ensure English faculty had a say in the approach we are taking in teaching with AI," Bartlett said.

And English associate professor Abram Anders teamed with colleagues, including Bartlett, to use fiscal year 2024 strategic plan funds to focus on improving student success and retention -- two areas impacted by the pandemic. 

The summer institute

With Miller Fellowship funding, more than 30 English instructors went back to school in June to a  "Redesign Institute" for the ISUComm foundation courses. The team of Bartlett, Amy Walton, ISUComm foundation courses assistant director; Brenna Dixon, coordinator of the English Links learning community; Katie Fulton, online learning coordinator; and Connor Ferguson, foundation courses graduate assistant; led faculty through the redesign discussion.

Bartlett ensured the institute addressed faculty concerns about AI. The group was challenged to anticipate where the ever-evolving technology could impact instruction as faculty work to help students benefit from it.

"We have to grapple with AI and the impact it will have on writing and communication instruction," Hegelheimer said. "It's important to know how to effectively deploy AI to guide students on the ethical use of it and provide guidance to instructors."

All institute participants were graduate students and term or tenure faculty in the English department. Leaders planned and organized the institute while select faculty developed the new curriculum. A wider swath of English department faculty reviewed the results and provided detailed feedback that was incorporated into the new components.

Institute participants developed learning activities and objectives to help instructors across all sections prepare students for the four major writing assignments in both courses. The result is a repository of learning activities designed to reintroduce AI to students and available to instructors this fall. Major assignments all have the same objective and grading criteria, but individual activities provide different ways of teaching students -- a requirement for courses that can have up to 70 instructors yearly.

For example, the new activities ask students to:

• Individually summarize an article about AI before discussing it in groups, incorporating their understanding of bias, ethics, intellectual property and environment
• Plug in a class assignment to Microsoft Copilot to see how it executes the prompts students write.

"The learning activities are not plug and play, but instructors can use them for ideas and inspiration or adapt them to their goals," Bartlett said. "We wanted to do the work collaboratively, involving as many instructors as we could. We were hearing from the faculty that if we are going to face AI head on, they want some support."

Institute participants also updated the statement on generative AI use in the foundation courses with the belief that students already have experience with AI.

"Last year, the statement said students had to follow their individual instructor's lead on its use," Bartlett said. "Now it says instructors still have a choice on the extent they integrate AI, but students will be reintroduced to generative AI in foundation courses through at least one activity."

The Miller Fellowship also allowed Bartlett to bring in speakers with extensive AI experience from Penn State University and Auburn University to instruct the faculty, and Anders demonstrated Copilot to provide examples of AI's abilities.

Building a foundation

English 1500 and 2500 focus on building key skills for students that improve their belief in themselves, Anders said.

The project he led last fall had three components:

• A social belonging assignment
• A comparison of retention rates for students who take foundation courses and those who test out
• Measuring the overall success of the courses

Students in 20% of fall 2023 sections of English 1500, led by voluntary instructors, completed an assignment about belonging in college and wrote about how they planned to achieve a stronger sense of belonging at ISU for themselves. 

"Students in those sections had a slightly better than 1% retention rate to the second semester than students in other sections," Anders said. "Our retention rates at ISU are super high across the board, so we are adding to a strength."

Under the direction of Bartlett, ISUComm foundation courses have played a key role in helping students adjust and succeed early in their college careers, Anders said.

In 2023-24, students in all sections of 1500 and 2500 experienced a "statistically significant growth in self-efficacy for academic writing, which is linked to retention and student success," Anders said. "The students who take one of these courses in their first year have had a relatively stronger retention rate. During the pandemic, students who took these courses weathered those challenges better and the benefit continues today."

* The Miller Faculty Development Fund is named for F. Wendell Miller of Rockwell City, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. That gift established the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings of which, in part, support faculty development proposals that advance the university's strategic plan. The faculty development program is administered by the office of the president and Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.