Writing Centre 2.0: Towards improving student writing through consultant and GenAI collaboration

This exploratory study investigates the integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into a faculty-specific writing centre at a South African university. The study introduces a custom GPT, the HWC_CollaboWriter, which was designed to assist writing consultants by addressing lower-order concerns (LOCs) such as grammar and punctuation, freeing consultants to focus on higher-order concerns (HOCs) like argument structure and content development. Drawing on current debates surrounding the role of AI in education, the paper proposes a framework for ethically incorporating GenAI in writing consultations, emphasising collaboration between AI and human consultants. Situated within a multilingual South African higher education context, the article also considers how consultant-mediated GenAI use can support writing development in ways that remain attentive to language justice and cross-linguistic lexical, grammatical, and syntactic transfer. Initial findings suggest that this approach could significantly enhance student engagement and writing development without compromising academic integrity.