Morgan Sims

Morgan Sims, PhD, is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Writers' Studio at Arizona State University's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, where she teaches first-year composition online and leads various faculty-driven initiatives in support of the program.She holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of New Mexico and has taught online FYC since 2016.

Her scholarly work examines how students respond when asked to use unfamiliar digital tools in composition classes, and her work within the Writers’ Studio is focused in part on how instructors construct their presence in asynchronous digital spaces and how those choices shape student belonging in online environments. 

Her research background and teaching experience extend to her work with AI, approaching the challenges of AI in higher education as design opportunities rather than policy problems. She has developed a variety of education focused AI tools, including an AI-based revision tool that presents students with options rather than corrections, keeping evaluative judgment in the student's hands. She led a team that built an AI-powered instructional voice tool along with a tool that revises AI generated text for commonly recognized linguistic AI ‘tells’ in the language. She also experiments with using AI to create innovative course design, content delivery, and asynchronous instruction.

Her teaching starts with a direct question: what does a student already know, and how do you build from there? As a first-generation college student, she brings a specific understanding of what it means to enter an academic discourse community without a roadmap. She is currently working on curriculum redesign plan that asks students to identify a discourse community they belong to or want to join, then use composition to analyze its communication practices, plan their entry or advancement, and develop a real project within that space. Students choose their own track: business, entrepreneurial, or academic.