POSIWID Writing Pedagogy

Submitter: Jason Crider, Texas A&M U

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The experiment:

I am increasingly teaching AI literacy through the lens of cyberneticist Stafford Beer’s dictum POSIWID (the purpose of a system is what it does). POSIWID is a systems thinking heuristic designed to help consider whether or not a system’s stated goal is at odds with its material impacts. It is a nice, succinct way to translate my post-process theory thoughts on writing to undergraduates in a way that is especially useful for addressing Generative AI. POSIWID gives students useful terminology and a dynamic framework to assess writing according to its circulation, audience, and impact rather than the intentions of its author(s). The purpose of an essay is what it does.

In my technical writing classes, students create a series of instructions and technical documentation in groups that then circulate to other groups for usability testing. At various stages, I give each group a secret “GenAI writing policy” card that dictates whether they: 1. must only use GenAI 2. are disallowed from using GenAI or 3. can choose whether or not to use GenAI. At the end of each stage, we spend time in class to assess the new pieces of writing. This is a continuation of an earlier class activity I called “the paranoid memorandum” (see below). The goal is for students to practice actively reflecting on the potential consequences of writing as a public, interpretive, and situated activity.

Results:

My POSIWID approach continues to evolve. Students really enjoy learning a little bit about Stafford Beer and using some of his ideas and terminology. It seems to help demystify writing a little bit by encouraging them to think about it in different terms: systems, engineering, architecture, recipe, etc. It also sets us up to have clear, even blunt, discussions about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what my expectations and assessment strategies look like. POSIWID also highlights the disconnect at the heart of so many current debates about writing instruction and AI: is this purpose of writing to pass a class or to learn, practice, or assess something? And are these things necessarily at odds?

I also like that this approach keeps the focus on the function and purpose of writing while still encouraging GenAI experimentation. I have found that students are eager to discuss writing in this group environment because it frames GenAI as a possibility, rather than as something I am policing. It also decenters the human author(s) in interesting ways that seem to lead to more frank and deliberate critical reflection. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if GenAI was used or not in any given instance; its potential use is enough to give me an exciting new shared approach with my students because we are all working collaboratively towards a shared purpose.

Relevant resources: https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/collections/textgened/professional-writing/the-paranoid-memorandum/

Contact: jcrider[AT]tamu[DOT]edu