In Carrie Kell Ed.D.’s “Writing Workshop” course, first-year students have found a surprising editing partner: Clara AI, a Socratic artificial intelligence-powered tutor. Through a collaboration with Write the World, a nonprofit that aims to develop teenagers’ writing and critical thinking skills, Kell is helping to pilot an AI tutor that strengthens undergrads’ writing abilities.
It’s also an opportunity for students to learn about the capabilities and limits of the new technology — as well as develop best practices regarding it.
“Artificial intelligence should be used for process, not product,” states Kell, coordinator of Bryant’s First-Year Writing program and History, Literature, and the Arts lecturer.
In 2025, the university received a Davis Educational Foundation grant to leverage generative AI to support academic success and persistence, with a focus on the first-year curriculum. The funding is strengthening the integration of AI tools into Bryant’s Impact Core general education curriculum and aims to establish AI tutors for each general education course.
Kell, one of 17 faculty members selected as a Bryant AI fellow to help set these initiatives and other AI-related innovations into motion, had been searching for ways to implement an AI tutor within Bryant’s “Writing Workshop.”
“I wanted to make something that didn’t replicate Grammarly and wasn’t already out there,” Kell says, noting that the tool had to push students’ critical thinking abilities.
As "Writing Workshop” isn’t a course where study guides and specific content can simply be uploaded to an AI chatbot, Kell connected with Write the World’s founder and CEO, former Bryant Board of Trustees member David Weinstein ’24H, whose company was looking to enhance Clara AI to meet higher education classroom needs.
“Clara AI presents questions and deepens critical thinking about things as opposed to giving students answers,” says Kell. “It aims to replicate an instructor's voice. For instance, if a student came to me and asked how to write a thesis statement, I wouldn't tell them what their thesis statement should be. I would ask questions like, ‘What's your argument?’”
The technology doesn’t replace the educator, Kell explains, but acts as a personal teacher’s aide that students can consult with outside of class when they’re working on assignments.
Tools for growth and confidence
Kell piloted Clara AI alongside other Bryant AI fellows this past fall, and in the spring, she and History, Literature, and the Arts Lecturer David Liao, Ph.D., each implemented the tool in one section of their “Writing Workshop” course. Their goal was to gather faculty and student feedback, provide that information to Write the World, and expand use of Clara AI to all first-year writing courses by the fall of 2026.
Mapping out the “Writing Workshop” curriculum for the semester, Kell highlighted areas within the syllabus where Clara AI could be implemented. Students, for instance, used the technology for feedback on their first paper. For their assignment on public writing and rhetorical awareness, they used Clara AI to better understand their audience, clarify the piece’s purpose, and ensure they’ve appropriately responded to the assignment and their audience’s needs.
The purpose of the course, Kell shares, is for students to come to understand what the writing process looks like from rough draft to final copy — and to develop increased confidence in their writing.
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“Students come into the course thinking one of two ways: Either they think they're the worst writers in the world and they hate writing, or they got an A in high school and feel like they don't need the class,” shares Kell. “There's rarely any in between, and I like how — by the end of the course — both sides have a better idea of what developing writing looks like and that there's still space to learn.”
Artificial intelligence, she believes, can assist with that effort. Kell has been helping undergrads leverage AI as a peer review partner for feedback on their papers since she began teaching at Bryant three years ago. She’s found that talking about AI, establishing guidelines for usage, and introducing it in the classroom early on has resulted in students being less likely to use the technology in negative ways.
“There's an agreement. ‘We'll use AI for these things, but I don't want to use you to use it for these other things,’” Kell says, adding that even though AI has created efficiencies, there's still a need for students to develop their individual writing skills.
During her time as a fellow with Bryant’s Center for Teaching Excellence, Kell wrote a dissertation on the perceptions of AI among first-year writing faculty. One of the key elements, she found, is that educators don't have to be AI experts, or teach students everything there is to know about artificial intelligence.
“AI is not the content of your course. It's your pedagogical tool for the course to help students get to the learning outcomes,” Kell says.