Prompt # 9: Synthesizing Microcontent

Yesterday, while introducing microessays to my ENG 306 students, I had one of those teaching moments that clarified something I've been wrestling with in my own AI content work.I was explaining my approach to AI in the classroom—that I'm not against it, and students are welcome to experiment, but I strongly discourage using AI to generate microessays. You have to learn what makes a good essay yourself before you can effectively direct AI to create one. I suggested other AI applications—topic generation, feedback on drafts—but emphasized that students need to write their own microessays.As I said this, a realization hit me that connects directly to the content scaling challenges many of us face: AI can help us scale our content, but we first have to know what content we’re scaling.