Why My AI Writing Assignment Failed

AI is here to stay, the experts say. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and give students a legitimate way to use AI in their writing.

I’ve heard those claims since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in late 2022 and sounded the death of the college essay. I’m an AI skeptic. As a historian, I know that teaching students to write and think for themselves is a crucial part of my job. But I’m also open-minded. As a historian, I know well the many examples of people resisting new technology simply because it’s disruptive—before embracing the same tech as an essential part of life.

As a historian, I know that teaching students to write and think for themselves is a crucial part of my job. So last year I decided to give AI a chance. I incorporated an AI-assisted option into the writing assignments for my history courses, expecting students to jump at the chance to use the technology that they’re already using all the time.

The assignment failed. Only a handful of students chose the AI option.

I want students to connect to the past through their own experiences. I teach survey courses, such as U.S. History from the Colonial Period to Reconstruction and the Greek, Roman, and Medieval portion of Western Civ. My classes are big, usually between 100 and 200 students or more. Throughout a semester, I assign several short papers based on a selection of readings or a documentary. Whatever the topic, I ask students to offer a personal perspective on what they’ve read or viewed. I want them to connect to the past through their own experiences.

For example, in Western Civ, students watch a documentary called The Hidden History of Egypt (presented by Monty Python alum Terry Jones) and answer whether they could survive ancient Egypt. In my U.S. History survey, meanwhile, I assign students passages on early American marriage practices from David Hackett Fischer’s comparative history of colonial America, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. I ask students to consider Puritan New England and Anglican Virginia and explain which region’s beliefs about marriage they find most (or least) appealing.

A year ago, I devised an AI-assisted option to accompany the traditional essay. Students received the same prompt, but they wrote their paper either the old-fashioned way or with AI assistance according to guidelines that I developed.

My guidelines laid out four legitimate ways for students to use AI: to refine their ideas, to organize their thoughts, to make sure their essays met the assignment’s requirements, and to proofread.

I gave examples of the kinds of prompts to use, such as those that asked a chatbot to help shape the ideas students had already started to form when reading or watching the material in the assignment. I offered examples of prompts to avoid, such as those that simply told AI to give them ideas or answers. The line between legitimate and illegitimate AI use, I told students, was who (or what) was really doing the thinking: them or a machine. Finally, I required students to provide a transcript of their AI chat so I could see how they worked.

I was proud of myself. The guidelines were clear, thoughtful, thorough, and couched in a positive tone about what to do right rather than threatening punishments for doing something wrong. The AI option I created was everything the AI-boosting “experts” have said teaching with AI should be.

Hardly any students wanted it. Out of about 1,000 possible essays that could have used the AI option, fewer than 50 actually did. I teach 700 students a year and offered the AI option for about half of all assigned essays.

Sensing that I’d wildly misjudged my students, I turned to them for insight into their thinking. I made a survey and simply asked: When given the choice to use AI or to write your papers the old-fashioned, no-AI-assistance way, which option did you choose and why?

I received about 200 responses. They ran the gamut from calling AI “a constant evil in my life” to thinking the AI option was “super cool.” Between those poles, three themes emerged from the students’ feedback.

Students reported choosing the traditional assignment because they feared they would mess up using AI. Anxiety was one dominant theme. Students reported choosing the traditional assignment because they feared they would mess up using AI and get punished for cheating. Students also said they were nervous that AI would give them wrong information or lead them to fail to meet the assignment’s expectations or make them sound robotic. “I feel like AI gives me ideas and phrases that sound too fake,” as one student put it.

Students also said they were nervous that AI would give them wrong information. What’s more, a couple of students shared that they lacked confidence using technology generally. “I am terrible at using technology,” a U.S. History student admitted. “It takes me a while to find apps on my phone.

On a more positive note, some students said they preferred traditional essays because they wanted to think and write for themselves. “Writing the paper without the use of AI allowed me to really focus on my own opinions and ideas,” said one student. “I like a more traditional paper written by my noggin only,” said another.

Finally, students often mentioned how framing the questions as a personal reflection discouraged AI use. “I feel like I never think to use AI assistance when writing about something I have genuine interest about,” a student revealed.

I’m not so naïve as to believe students shared their unvarnished thoughts with me, and I know there was unacknowledged AI use throughout the semester. One student’s survey response even began “ChatGPT said” before delivering a defense of traditional essay writing in the bland tone that chatbots love. When I failed to detect AI use early in the semester, I’m sure I trained students to keep passing it off as their own work rather than bothering with the AI rules of my guidelines.

Offering students a legitimate AI option isn’t enough because it doesn’t address the heart of the dilemma of teaching writing in the age of artificial intelligence. Writing is the most powerful tool ever invented for thinking. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a new way to write that may or may not really be writing and a new way to think that may or may not involve students really thinking.

I’m in the camp of AI skeptics, and I fear for what’s being lost as students outsource their writing and thinking to a machine. But even for AI boosters, who believe AI can enhance students’ thinking and prepare them for the modern workforce, my assignment’s failure suggests caution is in order. If students are going to learn how to use AI, they will need sustained, explicit instruction in how to do it, and that will take a commitment of time and money from universities.

At bottom, the debate about AI in writing assignments is really a debate about the purpose of an education: as learning for its own sake or to master currently-in-demand skills. Universities, being large, complex institutions with multiple stakeholders and interests, usually try to have it both ways. Faculty have their own choice to make: Either embrace AI and make it central to their classes or embrace traditional teaching techniques and work hard to mitigate the influence of AI.

I’ve recommitted to the second option. I shelved the AI-assisted option for my spring 2026 courses. It wasn’t working, anyway, and I’d rather put my efforts into a goal I find more rewarding: convincing students of the joy of writing that comes from their own noggins.

David Head is associate lecturer of history at the University of Central Florida and distinguished faculty fellow in history at Kentucky Wesleyan College.