By Brady Hall and Emma Bapst, Miami University of Ohio

Generative AI has become part of our writing center ecosystems. Whether we like it or not, students use it in their processes. Some professors require it in their courses; others ban it completely. This leaves students caught in the middle, trying to satisfy competing interests. As students perform to try to satisfy their instructors, they are learning a “hidden curriculum,” or knowledge that travels behind the network of traditional classroom education with regard to AI. These contexts permeate writing center experiences as well. With coexisting perspectives of AI refusal and acceptance, it can be difficult for writing center consultants to feel comfortable addressing AI use with students at all. 

This post presents questions for consultants to reflect on their experiences discussing GenAI in consultations, introduces frameworks to aid in these discussions, and relays some consultant experiences from the 2026 ECWCA writing center conference. We hope this will help consultants feel better prepared to address GenAI use in consultations.

A Reflective Framework

Guided questions can be useful to help consultants reflect on their experiences and to aid in continuing training so that their insights may be applied to future practices. The questions below are based on Brady and Emma’s roundtable presentation held at the 2026 ECWCA conference. The questions encouraged participants to draw from their experiences of discussing GenAI in consultations and co-create responses that may have better served the writers in that situation. In the process of telling stories, affective consultant responses were recognized and often shared by other participants, leading to moments of catharsis. These moments of catharsis, we think, are important for consultant wellbeing and might be replicated by giving consultants shared space to reflect on the following questions.

Following are the slides from the presentation. 

Brady-Hall-and-Emma-Bapst-_Discussing-GenAI-in-Writing-Consultations_-ECWCA-Slide-Deck-

Questions

This first set of questions asks consultants to reflect on their past experiences in consultations. 

1. If you have discussed GenAI use in consultations or with other consultants, what affective responses did you have?
2. In what ways have you seen writers use GenAI? Share a story?
3. Did you feel comfortable addressing or responding to the GenAI use? Why or why not?
4. Would you have responded differently looking back?
5. How should consultants talk to writers about varied perspectives from instructors, staff, etc?

Case Scenarios

This set of case scenario questions asks consultants to put themselves in another consultant’s shoes, to consider other experiences. Try to answer the questions based on your institution’s policies and your own practices and perspectives.

1. A consultant who is anti-AI has to work with a writer who discloses AI use in their composing process. What might a consultant say to that writer? What kind of training might prepare that consultant?
2. An ESL student comes to your writing center to discuss a final draft and states that they have used AI heavily for grammar, tone, and phrasing. How would you address this use in a consultation? How might an anti-AI policy or preference limit the ESL student?

Reflections on personal and shared consultant experiences of discussing GenAI can be important for preparing future responses and encouraging consultant wellbeing. The questions above can help guide these reflections. Much can also be learned from examining the experiences of consultants in our writing center scholarship.

Perspectives from Consultants

Since 2024, four Tutors’ Columns in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship have been dedicated to consultants questioning the role of GenAI in consultations (Patchen 2024; Lester 2024; Neves 2025; Hall 2025). This number alone says something about the urgency of the issue to consultants. Their experiences have run the gamut, expressing excitement, curiosity, confusion, nervousness, hesitancy, and more. 

In research for our roundtable discussion, Brady and I analyzed these four tutor columns from WLN: A Journal for Writing Center Scholarship. Each column features personal stories from writing center consultants who navigated working with writers who use generative AI in their writing processes. Fascinatingly, the columns feature four unique perspectives on how GenAI should (or should not) be used or addressed. This current writing center scholarship shows how consultants are addressing AI use in student writing as well as using AI to help students with their writing processes. Engagement with the range of consultant perspectives and experiences can be helpful to consider how we might engage these discussions should they occur in future consultations.

Brady Hall

I had my own experience as a consultant with confusion, nervousness, and curiosity with GenAI in a writing center appointment. This led me to write a Tutor’s Column for WLN. As an undergraduate at Northern Kentucky University, I had a multilingual biology student come into the center. She was tasked with writing an essay, and brought pages of bullet points answering the necessary questions. Though the bullet points were difficult to read, she expressed an understanding of the course content verbally. She asked me if I would help her put the content into a chatbot and refine her work into a cohesive draft. First, I asked about the course policy; there was none. It seemed like her struggle came with expressing herself in Standard American English (SAE) and not with her understanding of the material. 

Guided by the concept of linguistic equity, I decided to help her do it (more details included in article). I helped her examine the rubric for the assignment and we worked to prompt the chatbot in ways that would help construct the essay she was to write. At that moment, I felt uneasy. My training hadn’t prepared me to address the situation, and so I had to rely on my understanding of writing, my ethics, and my evaluation of the student’s content knowledge to proceed.

Dani Lester

Dani Lester’s column addresses how generative AI use in writing processes can diminish authorial voice. After asking ChatGPT to analyze “Glory of Women,” a poem by Siefried Sassoon, Lester found the literary analysis insufficient and lacking. She suggests that writers who use AI “filter their authentic voices through a sieve that removes diversity and personal flair in favor of language partial to its creators” (Lester). 

She also provides a story of a consultation in which she suspected a student had used AI in her writing. She noted the writing felt “disconnected” (Lester). Instead of accusing the student of using AI, Lester asked the student why they picked the topic, and then she used speech-to-text tutoring to jot down the student’s responses. Lester decided that “whether or not she used GenAI,” the student was “capable of writing the paper and had something worthwhile to say” (Lester). Throughout the column, Lester emphasizes that tutors and faculty can collaborate to ensure that students use AI in an effective and ethical manner.

Timoteo Neves

Timoteo Neves shifts from Lester’s perspective of AI and claims that it is a tool that can positively enhance creativity and critical thinking skills in writing consultations. He shares a story about a writing consultation that he facilitated with a student who was experiencing writer’s block. 

Neves originally recommended that the student freewrite about his topic, but throughout the appointment, he realized that he might “benefit from both human encouragement and technological aids” (Neves). The student seemed excited to engage in the task, and Neves concluded that writing centers need to promote “both digital and human connection” (Neves). While writing center tutors offer an “essential human element,” incorporating digital technologies such as GenAI can “enhance, rather than detract, from creativity in the writing process” (Neves). 

Ultimately, Neves concludes that “using GenAI tools to facilitate brainstorming and enhance the writing process is another way to develop writers’ critical thinking during consultations” (Neves). 

Abigail Patchen

In her column, Abigail Patchen argues that consultants provide essential scaffolding skills and supplemental knowledge that GenAI lacks. Patchen values the unique experiences and development that students find in writing center consultations, and she claims that by using GenAI, students may be shortcutting the writing process. 

Tutors can “determine…gaps in student knowledge,” and “generative AI does not have this same ability to pivot” (Patchen). Tutors can also support the long-term development of the writer, another ability that AI does not possess. 

Patchen does not dismiss AI as a tool that should be shunned in writer centers—instead, she identifies one positive use of AI: L2 learners (Patchen). She suggests that a collaboration between tutors and digital technologies can allow tutors to “play a key role in promoting language diversity while students use AI tools to learn” (Patchen). However, it cannot scaffold and develop a writer as a writing center tutor can. Patchen ultimately concludes that “we can do everything that AI can do, but AI cannot do everything we can” (Patchen). 

Conclusion

From discussions at the 2026 ECWCA conference, our roundtable participants kept coming back to how the consultant role stays the same throughout these seemingly existential changes brought about by AI. We still have students come in that feel inadequate, that feel they are “bad writers.” We have students that have been told they need to “fix up” their work. We have students who are told their Englishes aren’t appropriate for an academic setting. These are age-old issues that writing centers and consultants have had to contend with. 

The introduction of AI only makes a quick fix more appealing. A chatbot conversation becomes less intimidating than sharing work with a peer. A simple prompt is easier than fighting for linguistic equity or critically revising a draft. 

Now more than ever, we must make clear the value of peer collaborations, of the writing center, and of writing. We must advocate for the human benefits of critical reflection and engagement with writing. Preparing consultants to discuss the affective responses, composing processes, and experiences of writers in the age of AI is how we can convey our value.

Works Cited

Hall, Brady. “Generative AI and Linguistic Equity for EL Writers Across Disciplines.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 50, no. 1, 2025.

Lester, Dani. “GenAI in the Writing Center.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 48, no. 3, 2024.

Neves, Timoteo. “Harnessing the Power of GenAI.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 49, no. 4, 2025.

Patchen, Abigail. “The People Make the Place: Reminding Tutors of Their Value in a World of Artificial Intelligence.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 49, no. 1, 2024.