Event Description
As scholars, developers, and politicians debate the trajectory and implications of AI’s impact, educators are grappling daily with the realities of AI in the classroom, often without sufficient support. The stakes of this struggle are particularly high for language and literature educators: AI’s ability to produce and respond to human language creates an array of potential benefits (e.g., personalized learning, autonomy, motivation) and concerns (e.g., language homogenization, displacement of culture, overreliance and learning loss, perceptions of the irrelevance of language learning).
The 2027 iteration of the Language & AI Conference will focus on the language and literature classroom, looking to translate current research and theory into practical guidance for if/how/when to integrate AI into language & literature teaching and learning.
Guiding Questions
- What implications does AI have for the teaching of world languages?
- What do language educators need to know about AI to make agentive decisions about its (non)use in the classroom?
- What are language educations currently doing to address/engage with AI in their classrooms and programs?
Event Details
Thursday, February 25, 2027, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM | B4 Dwinelle Hall and Zoom
Registration: In Person
Registration: Zoom
Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: Writing, Co-Writing, And Language
Pranav Anand
Professor of Linguistics, Associate Dean of Research for Humanities Division, and Faculty Director of The Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz
For many humanists, writing is the double of thinking itself. Unsurprisingly, as educators, we have for generations emphasized writing practice as essential to the development of a host of critical thinking skills, including rhetorical structure, close analysis, and comparative reasoning. Writing assignments are thus used not just to evaluate student learning but to directly improve it.
Large language models, with their ability to construct coherent, context-appropriate prose, thus feel like an existential threat. They can generate essays with ease that invalidate our assessment systems. And by encouraging early writers to offload some of the cognitive burden of writing, they rob those writers of the learning that comes from taking on those tasks themselves.
In this talk, I present some reasons not for optimism per se, but realism. Considering the literature of the learning efficacy of writing in psychology, I suggest that however profound the benefits from writing may be in principle, our historic practices have not lived up to that promise. Large language models, I argue, present an important opportunity to isolate the processes recruited during writing, and to make crucial progress on understanding how writing reflects our thinking, and how it shapes it.
In this talk, I present some reasons not for optimism per se, but realism. Considering the literature of the learning efficacy of writing in psychology, I suggest that however profound the benefits from writing may be in principle, our historic practices have not lived up to that promise. Large language models, I argue, present an important opportunity to isolate the processes recruited during writing, and to make crucial progress on understanding how writing reflects our thinking, and how it shapes it.
Description
GenAI provokes existential questions about writing, including its role in the humanities and higher education more broadly. In this panel, we gather together scholars and practitioners who are thinking about writing and AI outside the box–how to teach writing, how to assess writing, how to write itself.
Panelists
Lillian Jones | Assistant Professor of Teaching/Director of Spanish Language Program | UC Irvine
Sophia Minnillo | Postdoctoral Researcher | UC Davis University Writing Program
Ben Spanbock | Continuing Lecturer | UC Berkeley College Writing Program
Description
The Undergraduate Research Showcase provides a forum for undergraduate research that explores how language/ literature/ culture intersects with digital technologies, including but not limited to AI technologies. Designed as a poster session, the showcase enables attendees to peruse multiple projects while enjoying light snacks and refreshments.
Presenters
"Beyond Accuracy: AI Translation and the Human Touch in Language" | Rebecca Ciancaglini
"When Algorithms Read Destiny: AI and BaZi" | Bingxi Li
"Techno-Self-Help: Spending Time Alone with ChatGPT" | Jose Madrigal
"The Midas Myth in Robotics: A Case for Liminality" | Nicole Oliva and Nina Beguš
"Marco Polo Enters the Backrooms: Calvino’s Invisible Cities as a Generative World" | Xuan Tang and Zhanruo Li
"Authent: Making the Writing Process Visible" |Praveen Vadlamani and Omar Alfaro
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