🗓️ Tuesday 20 May 2025  🕒 15:00-16:00

• ⚫️Theme: ‘Wildcard’

AI as Creative Writing Coach: Exploring Human-AI Collaboration in Creative Writing Learning

Cinzia Pusceddu

Recording

Abstract

What role can AI play in creative writing learning beyond simply generating or editing text? My research investigates the potential of generative AI as a collaborative partner in creative learning, focusing on its role in prompting the writer’s reflection rather than contributing directly to the writing itself. Drawing on enactivist theory’s (1) view of learning as emerging through interaction and posthumanist perspectives on non-human agency, I intend to examine how sustained AI-human dialogue influences creative development and writing processes. The research combines autoethnography to document the writer’s subjective experience with thing ethnography (2) to capture AI’s role as an active participant, producing both theoretical insights into human-AI collaboration and a literary work that emerges through this process. The resulting creative piece serves as both artwork and case study, embodying the research findings and demonstrating how AI-human creative partnerships affect creative choices, self-reflection, and artistic development.

At the Digital Education Conference, I briefly introduce my research before presenting the initial critical stage: developing effective instructions for AI systems to function as writing coaches, sharing my approach and early insights from this process. While in its early stages, my research has the potential to contribute to discussions on AI in digital education by exploring its role as a writing coach that supports creative learning through structured dialogue and reflection, deepening rather than automating the writing process

References

1. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience.
2. Giaccardi, E., Cila, N., Speed, C., & Caldwell, M. (2016). Thing Ethnography: Doing Design Research with Non-Humans.