Writing with AI can look deceptively simple. Effortlessly, even.
Type at a prompt and a polished paragraph will appear in seconds. Neat, confident, clean.
But that apparent ease is deceptive, says Abram Anders, associate professor of English and professor of innovation at Iowa State University.
“Writing with AI doesn’t go beyond writing,” he says. “This changes it.”
In a new study Computers and CompositionAnders and co-author Emily Dox Speltz, an Iowa State alumna and assistant professor of humanities and communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, say the biggest hurdle in teaching students to write with AI isn’t the technology—it’s the students’ assumptions about what to write.
“Students often expect AI to act as a shortcut, but the truth is, AI-assisted writing demands more thought from students, not less,” said Anders, who also serves as associate director of Iowa State’s Student Innovation Center.
“As a tool, AI only handles surface-level writing, and the real heavy lifting—concept formation, judging, revision strategies, and quality control—is left to the student writer.”
To conduct the study, Anders and Dux Speltz designed an experimental “AI and Writing” course that followed 38 undergraduate students from 22 majors as they learned to collaborate with generative AI tools over two semesters. Students completed structured assignments, reflected on their process, and documented how their thinking changed as they experimented with AI tools.
At the start of the course, Anders says students carry a variety of assumptions, including that “better tools should take less effort” and “AI will work for me.” But reality quickly challenged those beliefs, he added, as one student reflected, “I had to learn how to think about my thoughts.”
The researchers found that there are three “threshold concepts” — or big ideas — that students need to understand before they can write effectively with AI.
First? Writing with AI is experimental, and students must learn to try, experiment, and tinker.
“AI is not going to provide a ‘perfect’ answer or automatically spit out what you need,” Anders says. “It requires trial and error—trying, testing, revising and trying again.”
The researchers said some students reported that they initially treated the AI like a search engine: enter a vague prompt, accept what comes back. But as the course progresses, they learn that effective prompting requires planning, clarity, and rhetorical awareness — the same skills strong writers use without AI.
Which brings us to the second threshold concept: writing with AI still requires human skills.
“AI writes in confident sentences, uses the right tone and sounds smart,” Anders said. “But that polish can trick students into believing it, even when it’s inaccurate, shallow, or completely missing the point.”
This potential pitfall is sometimes referred to as the “fluency trap,” Anders says.
However, once students learn to read AI content critically and ask questions, they begin to see that fluency is not the same as understanding.
“It’s crucial that students learn to interrogate what AI creates and not just edit it,” Anders said. “This means testing claims, refining arguments, and ensuring that writing aligns with the different expectations of different disciplines—all tasks that require human judgment.”
This also leads to the concept of ownership, which Anders and Dax Speltz address with a third threshold concept: writing with AI should ultimately augment human agency, not replace it.
“Students must recognize that while AI can create text, it can’t create purpose—only authors can do that,” Anders said.
“Generative AI cannot decide what it is arguing, what is important or why the text exists. It is a tool that requires human guidance, judgment and boundaries.”
The researchers describe this as “a shift from outsourcing work to orchestrating it.”
“After crossing the third threshold concept, students are using AI to explore possibilities, test ideas, and refine thinking rather than avoiding the cognitive load of writing,” Anders said.
As AI tools become more common in academic, professional and everyday writing, Anders and Dax Speltz say students will need not only technical skills, but also a deep understanding of how writing works.
“AI changes the workflow, but it doesn’t change the thinking of writing,” Anders says. “Students still have to make decisions, determine directions, and make sense of shapes.”
Students who went through Threshold as part of the “AI and Writing” course reported becoming more reflective, more critical, and more intentional about their choices, the researchers say, and instead of treating AI as a shortcut, they began using it to evaluate ideas, explore alternatives, and strengthen their arguments—a shift that reflects the real-world demands of writing.
“When students learn to dictate without relying on AI, they become stronger writers, and that’s a skill that will be important long after the tools change,” Anders said.
Source: Iowa State University
Original study DOI: 10.1016/j.compcom.2026.103008
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Previously published with future.org Creative Commons License
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