Faculty Perspectives on Students Using AI
for Technical Writing Assignments
Michael Alley, Stephanie Cutler, Shawna Dory, Andrea Khouzami,
Kendall Mattson, and Ibukun Osunbunmi
Published 10 April 2026*
Kendall Mattson, and Ibukun Osunbunmi
Published 10 April 2026*
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Introduction
The selected quotations on this page arise from a faculty survey on allowing students to use artificial intelligence (AI) to write about technical content [1]. Responding to the survey were 100 faculty members representing more than 40 colleges across the United States and Canada. These instructors fall into three groups: faculty from the humanities who are teaching a technical writing course; writing faculty situated in an engineering or science college; and engineering or science faculty teaching a writing-component course. All these faculty teach a significant number of students from engineering or science. The faculty quotations appear in a blue-to-green spectrum in which blue quotations lean toward not allowing students to use AI, while green lean quotations toward allowing students to use AI. Quotations that reside in the middle are given in purple. Quotations "I think my role is to help students develop their own expert knowledge. Extending that cognition to AI short-circuits their own developmental process." Writing Faculty in Engineering "Similar to how I allow myself to use AI, I allow students to use AI for grammar checks, gathering ideas (with human validation), and suggestions on writing tone, as long as the ideas are originally theirs." Faculty Member in Engineering "My stance is that 'If GenAI can do it, [students] won't be doing it in the future.' Students need to focus on developing higher-order skills like innovation, critical thinking, narrative, debate, and empathy if they are going to stay competitive for careers. We need to teach students to do things GenAI can't do." Faculty Member in English "I specifically limit or prohibit [AI] activities that would result in meaningful cognitive offloading. Because teaching responsible and ethical use of AI is a daunting task, I feel more comfortable with a blanket restriction." Faculty Member from the Humanities "My policy is that students can use AI if they ask me in advance, and if they document the AI program in the Works Cited." Faculty Member in English "I have prohibited all use of generative AI (with the sole exception of certain citation generators) to ensure students are actually putting in the necessary hard work to learn a new skill. If they just have the AI do it for them, then they will not learn (or will lose, if they have already learned) the skills necessary for ideating, drafting, and revising." Faculty Member from English "If students want to use AI more extensively than I have stated, they need to explain and justify that use. Overall, my policy is still a work in progress." Faculty Member from the Humanities |
Quotations (Continued)
"The course I teach is often the singular writing course students must take at my institution. I ban AI in my course because (a) I can't sign off on the student's ability to write and communicate clearly if they did not do the work themselves, and (b) students at this stage generally do not have the writing or communication knowledge to evaluate AI output in a meaningful way." Faculty Member from the Humanities "I allow students to use GenAI without hard restrictions because I don't think it makes sense to pretend writing is ever "purely human" or tool-free. My focus is on how the students use it: Are they outsourcing the parts of the work where they actually need to think and make judgments, or are they using it to reduce unnecessary friction so they can spend more time on higher-level decisions? I ask students to document their workflows and take intellectual responsibility for anything submitted under their name, but I don't ban tools that are rapidly becoming part of real-world writing practices." Faculty Member from the Humanities "Drafting with AI is something I highly discourage, but I also recognize that their future colleagues are doing so." Faculty Member from the Humanities "No AI is allowed in my class under any circumstances." Faculty Member from English "Students are allowed to use AI freely as long as they cite AI use as well as make an AI statement at the beginning, explaining how they used AI." Faculty Member from English |
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References
1. S. Cutler, M. Alley, S. Dory, and I. Osunbunmi, "National Survey of Faculty on Using AI in Technical Writing Assignments," Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education, Penn State (2026). |
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* AI was not used to draft or revise this webpage.