Richard Haslam (rhaslam@sju.edu) is an associate professor of English, at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

The Norton Learning Blog has recently featured several posts that offer suggestions for generating greater classroom success by integrating ChatGPT and similar machine-learning applications. (I find the latter a more accurate—and less anthropomorphizing—term than AI.) However, this particular post goes out to all who—for pedagogical, or numerous other reasons—search for the grail of LLM (large language model)-free spaces. 

I joined that quest in Fall 2023, switching to an all-writing-done-by-hand-in-class, all-electronics-put-away, all-coursebooks-in-print-mode approach that might be termed artisanal, since it draws upon traditional, nonmechanical methods and encourages students to be hands-on crafters of thought and language. This educational experiment renewed my appreciation for Norton Critical Editions (NCEs), which (as a Norton academic marketing manager noted in a January 2025 email) can deliver “[e]verything a student needs to research and write a paper,” while reducing the risk of automatic recourse to chatbots.  

In an essay published last year, I tracked my early experiences of using NCEs (and other types of print coursebooks) for my English literature courses. In this post, I want to follow up with further suggestions (and caveats) for anyone interested in an NCE-assisted “digital detox,” either for a class period or a whole semester. 

Long before the course commences, if you choose to email students in order to encourage them to read the texts in advance, you should ensure that your college bookstore website lists only the exact edition you intend your students to use. Make sure also to supply reminders on that website (and in emails to students) about purchasing the required edition in print. This summer, working around the limitations of my bookstore’s pre-loaded notes system, I was eventually able to attach the following line: “Your instructor requires print textbooks only. Do not purchase digital versions.” If a student has a documented medical condition that necessitates an ebook, I do, of course, comply with that requirement. 

Another recommendation: well before the course starts, explain to enrollees the rationale for—and advantages of—the non-tech technique. I point to the scientifically established benefits of writing on paper by hand for heightening memory preservation and reclamation, and of reading print rather than electronic texts for strengthening active and deep reading. ¹ My syllabus defines “an active reader” as “someone who interacts with the text through frequent and detailed annotation,” whether “by highlighting, writing in the margins, and / or using mini sticky notes (using nothing larger than a mini sticky note), so that you are both identifying and commenting upon key passages.” ²

But beware! So strong is the lure of false economy shortcuts that some students eschew brief annotations and laboriously copy by hand onto large sticky notes the spewings-forth of LLMs, for subsequent concealment between coursebook pages. In response, I have had to revise the syllabus: “Please note that your annotations (whether via mini sticky notes or on the coursebook itself) should consist only of key words or short phrases or symbols and not of lengthy phrases or whole sentences.” On the plus side, it helps that BookTok and other social media sites are currently celebrating the joys of authentic human annotation. 

In persuading students of the benefits of an artisanal, tech-free approach, further assistance arises from a recent MIT analysis of the rise or fall of neural connectivity when students are utilizing one of three different resources for essay writing: “Brain-only,” “Search engine,” or “LLM.” Initial results from this preprint study indicate that “repeated reliance on external systems like LLMs replaces the effortful cognitive processes required for independent thinking,” leading to an “accumulation of cognitive debt” that “defers mental effort in the short term but results in long-term costs, such as diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity.” 

Contrariwise, I promise students that—in exchange for the relatively minor inconveniences of in-class-only and brain-only writing—I will help them to develop significantly key critical thinking skills and habits: 

The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent [i.e. practicing phronesis / practical wisdom] in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit.

To make clearer the long-term practical benefits of these skills and habits, I emphasize to students that the National Association of Colleges and Employers identifies Critical Thinking as one of “eight career readiness competencies.” I also point out that, according to a large-scale meta-analysis, the best way to elicit such critical thinking is for students to engage in focused “Individual Study” outside the classroom and informed “Dialogue” within, and for faculty to provide both “mentoring” and “Authentic or Anchored Instruction.” The latter requires “present[ing] students with genuine problems or problems that make sense to them, engage them, and stimulate them to inquire.”  

And here we come to the effectiveness of NCEs in promoting that goal. Unlike most academic editions of classic works, NCEs include not only the primary text (with an introduction and footnotes), but also a wide range of relevant contextual and critical materials. ³ I draw upon these materials for the in-class paper linked to our reading of Macbeth (Second Norton Critical Edition). For this “Anchored Instruction” task, the student must assume the role of a director rehearsing one of the shorter and lesser-known of the play’s scenes (selected from a specific list). In this role, they must write an advice letter to the cast and crew about staging the scene effectively for a 2025 audience, at London’s Globe Theatre, using the original dialogue and Renaissance costumes and settings. They must also include at least three relevant and insightful quotations from different sections of the NCE’s critical essays and its contextual selections (which include historical sources and actors’ reflections). With only the NCE Macbeth and a blue book in front of them, students build their essay over three class sessions (15 minutes of brainstorming, 15 minutes of outlining, 70 minutes of rough drafting). At the end of each session, I collect the blue books, read them, and provide feedback (a.k.a. mentoring), so that in the fourth session (70 minutes of final drafting) students can produce an essay that has evolved and—ideally—improved. ⁴

This method is not completely cheat-proof, of course, but it can generate the kind of intellectual “friction” and neural growth that is diminished by reflex recourse to LLMs. ⁵ In addition, the presence of hallucinated citations in a student’s essay flags the absence of real reading, a foible that this in-class method seeks to prevent.  

The NCE’s contextual materials also provide an incentive for students to engage in active reading across the whole semester. According to a recent study, students who struggle with completing (or even commencing!) course readings have “two main complaints”: (i) “the assigned reading rarely gets talked about in class,” so “[i]f the professor doesn’t refer to it […], why should they think it’s important?”; and (ii) “they don’t really understand what they are supposed to be reading for.” So, when you assign a reading, it’s important to provide very specific prompts and also to discuss in detail during the following class the reading and the prompts. ⁶ Here, again, the Macbeth NCE’s contextual materials offer good resources to promote recurrent active reading. For example, an editorial footnote on the extract from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles lists some of the major adoptions and adaptations Shakespeare made to this source. My prompt asks the students, as they actively read Holinshed, to think about which other elements from the Chronicles Shakespeare included (and why), which elements he excluded (and why), and which completely new elements he introduced (and why). With respect to the contextual materials containing Martin Luther’s argument against free will, and Erasmus’s argument for it, I ask students to link specific quotations from Luther and Erasmus to specific quotations from Macbeth itself, and to be prepared to explain in class why the links are significant. The same goes for connecting specific passages in the play to contextual materials concerning debates in the 1500s and early 1600s about witchcraft and regicide. 

It’s true that no specific edition will satisfy every professor and every student, but I have found that, overall, NCEs constitute a potent academic resource for faculty who wish to practice artisanal reading and writing, so that they can develop their students’ critical thinking and also prevent the humanities from degenerating into the machineries.

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1. For more insights and relevant links on this topic, see these essays by Johanna Alonso and Katie Day Good. An interviewee in Alonso’s article identifies one key function of handwritten assignments: “We’re not just in the business of facilitating learning; we’re in the business of certifying learning. There has to be [sic] secure assessments to say to the world, ‘This is a person who has the knowledge and abilities we are promising they have […]”. Similarly, Day Good argues that “[a]fter decades of assuming that computers are essential to students’ education and future success, universities are discovering that their credibility as institutions of higher learning will depend on, in some settings, depriving students of access to technology.”  ↩︎
2. For students who require digital texts, annotation tools that mimic highlighters and sticky notes are available in most ebook platforms; the key to avoiding the temptation of LLM use in tandem is downloading the text for offline reading, and turning off wifi or cellular data when engaging with it.  ↩︎
3. For example, Broadview Press editions include contextual materials and reviews, but not critical essays.  ↩︎
4. This entails a lot of labor on the instructor’s part, so the approach is more workable for smaller, writing-intensive-sized classes.  ↩︎
5. For the “Anchored Instruction” tasks relating to the contextual and critical materials in the NCEs of Gulliver’s Travels and The Awakening, please see my Critical Humanities essay.  ↩︎
6. Another recommendation: don’t tell students in advance whether the next class will include either a collected and graded response or an in-class activity; in this way, you can create “accountability strategies” for active reading. Such stratagems have become increasingly necessary, since, as one researcher notes, “many students have decided it’s not worth doing the reading in advance of class”; “[i]nstead, they run assigned case studies through AI to get the highlights.” 
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