In the rush to automate, what if the real assignment is staying awake? Dean of Academic Technology Gerry White sat down with us to talk about AI in the classroom, why process now matters as much as product, and how teachers can protect student voice without pretending the machines don’t exist. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Everyone’s asking the same question: will AI replace writing?
Gerry White: Wrong question. The danger isn’t that AI replaces writing; it’s that we let it replace thinking. Writing has always been a way to make thought visible. If we reduce it to output, a model will beat us every time in basic writing on speed and surface polish. But if we treat writing as a framework for thought a mirror for the mind then the work changes. The goal isn’t “no AI.” The goal is authorship with AI, without surrendering agency.
Q: So what actually changes in practice for teachers?
Gerry: The center of gravity shifts from product to process. We have to grade how students got there: the questions they asked, what they accepted or rejected, where they pushed back. That means visible prompting trails, short reflections, and evidence of decision-making. If a sentence survives into the final draft, the student should be able to say why it stayed and where the machine helped, if it did.
Q: Walk us through your writing workflow for the AI era.
Gerry: I use five moves. They’re simple on purpose.
Freewrite first before any model.
Give thought a pulse. Two to five minutes. No rubric, no tool. “What do I think?” Chaos is fine. It marks the line in the sand: this is me, unassisted. You protect the fragile signal of voice before it gets blended.
Only then invite the machine.
AI enters as a research assistant, not an oracle. Ask it to define terms, surface counterarguments, stress-test assumptions. If the response doesn’t surprise or frustrate you, you’re skating on the surface. Good prompts create productive friction.
Draft in dialogue with the tool.
Use AI for outlines differences, structures, transitions: scaffolds, not ghostwriting. Every surviving sentence must be owned; the writer is responsible for it. Ownership means the student can defend it, cite assistance when appropriate, and explain revisions.
Revise like a human, with help.
AI is great at tone checks and clarity, but clarity can sand off voice. Compare model suggestions with your own instincts and with peer feedback. Keep the texture that makes meaning stick.
Reflect as a deliverable.
The paper isn’t the only artifact. A short reflection travels with it: What did I use AI for and why? What felt off? What did I change after reading the model’s take? That metacognition is the real assessment.
Q: You keep coming back to questions. Why elevate questioning over answers?
Gerry: Because in an AI-saturated world, answers are cheap and everywhere. The differentiator is question quality. Students must learn to ask layered, precise, purpose-driven questions then interrogate the outputs. What’s the model assuming? What’s missing? Who benefits if I accept this as true? We’re teaching epistemology as much as composition.
Q: What does a modern rubric look like if process matters this much?
Gerry: It still values a clear, compelling final draft but in context. I add four visible bands:
- Inquiry: quality of questions and follow-ups; evidence of genuine exploration.
- Method: transparent prompt trail, brief summaries of tool use, citations of AI-assisted text where appropriate.
- Judgment: moments of challenge accept, reject, or adapt and the reasoning behind those choices.
- Voice & Integrity: does the writer remain present? Can I still hear them?
We stop grading artifacts alone. We start assessing agency.
Q: How do you keep students from outsourcing everything?
Gerry: You don’t win that fight by prohibition; you win it by design. Require the freewrite. Require the prompt log. Make reflection part of the grade. Build assignments that hinge on personal observation, local data, class-only sources, or iterative studio crits. When the path through the work is visible, mindless outsourcing gets expensive and obvious.
Q: Some faculty worry that all this transparency turns them into cops.
Gerry: Flip the framing. Documentation isn’t surveillance—it’s scholarship. We’ve always asked researchers to show their method. Now first-year writers do too. The message to students is: “I’m not here to catch you. I’m here to see you think.”
Q: What about equity? Doesn’t AI widen gaps?
Gerry: It can, if we treat it like a secret advantage. So we don’t. We teach it out loud, in the open, with shared norms. We model good prompts, ethical constraints, and citation practices. We provide access, we co-write policies with students, and we normalize reflection. When the culture is transparent, the tool becomes a literacy, not a loophole.
Q: Give administrators a playbook. What should they do this term, not next decade?
Gerry: Three moves:
- Policy to practice: Replace “Don’t use AI” with “Here’s how we use it well.” Publish a simple decision tree for faculty and students.
- Assessment redesign: Add a small process portfolio to major assignments—freewrite snapshot, prompt trail, and a 150–300 word reflection.
- Faculty studio hours: Weekly, low-stakes show-and-tell. Teachers bring a prompt, a failure, and a fix. Culture beats memos.
Q: And for students who ask, “Isn’t using AI cheating?”
Gerry: Using a calculator isn’t cheating on long division if the assignment is calculus. Likewise, using AI to think for you on a thinking assignment misses the point. But using AI to test a structure, surface a counterexample, or hear your sentence in another register? That’s collaboration with attribution. The line is authorship and awareness.
Q: What do you say to the “ban it” crowd?
Gerry: People wanted to ban Google. Socrates wanted to ban writing. We tried banning Wikipedia. We got worse researchers. Banning is a temporary wall; literacy is a long-term bridge. The work now is to teach students to remain human while using powerful tools. That means voice, judgment, accountability, and the courage to revise: not just a paper, but the self that wrote it.
Q: Final word for educators who feel overwhelmed.
Gerry: Start small. Make the invisible visible. Ask for one freewrite, one prompt trail, one reflection. Praise good questions. Celebrate revisions that protect voice. Keep the human in the loop, on purpose. The point was never just to create content. The point was to create people who can think. AI raises the stakes; it doesn’t change the mission.
About Gerry White
Gerry White is the Dean of Academic Technology at ECPI University, where he leads innovation at the intersection of education, AI, and the humanities. A teacher, technologist, and writer with over two decades of experience, Gerry has guided the integration of emerging technologies into higher education while keeping human creativity and critical thinking at the core.
As Dean, he oversees initiatives that empower students and faculty to engage responsibly with AI and digital tools, from classroom practice to enterprise-level strategy. He is also the founder of Life Preserve, an AI/AR company dedicated to preserving human stories and ideas, and is the creator of several apps, immersive technology projects and community-driven AI initiatives.
Through his books, articles, and public speaking, Gerry highlights how AI is reshaping not just education but culture and cognition. He challenges educators, parents, and professionals to consider not only what AI can do, but what it should do, and how we can preserve human voice, trust, and imagination in a rapidly changing world.
