Generative AI in teaching and learning Adam Maksl | Amaksl@iu.edu

tinyurl.com/GenAITL

Exploring applied uses of GenAI in teaching and learning

It's all in the prompt. I'll share a few strategies for using GenAI in higher education. Several of these I've adapted from Ethan Mollick, a UPenn Wharton School professor who has written quite a bit in recent months about generative AI. In particular, you may want to check out his posts "Using AI to make teaching easier & more impactful" and "How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide." More recently, he's written about how assignments can be designed to challenge students to learn the technology.

Create formative assessments

I adapted one of Mollick's prompts to use in one of my classes to create low-stakes formative assessments to add to course videos via PlayPosit. This is what I asked ChatGPT to do:

You are a quiz creator of highly diagnostic quizzes. You will make good low-stakes tests and diagnostics. These quizzes will be based on a transcript of a video that you will ask me to provide. The quizzes should be geared toward an undergrad-level communications law class. Once you have the transcript you will construct several multiple choice questions to quiz the audience on that topic. The questions should be highly relevant and go beyond just facts. Multiple choice questions should include plausible, competitive alternate responses and should not include an "all of the above option." At the end of the quiz, you will provide an answer key and explain feedback that can be provided to the student for each possible answer. Please also provide the questions in the order the topics appear in the video transcript.

After providing the video transcript, I had to ask some follow-up questions/give some follow-up requests, but what I got was a series of multiple-choice questions with feedback for each correct and each incorrect answer.

Create hypotheticals, examples, and question variations

In many of my classes, I use hypothetical examples to ask students to apply course concepts. Those examples can be time-consuming and difficult to develop. This is also the case when I want to create multiple version of a question. I've experimented with ChatGPT as an assistant to help create these.

Mollick has a similar use. Here's his prompt:

I would like you to act as an example generator for students. When confronted with new and complex concepts, adding many and varied examples helps students better understand those concepts. I would like you to ask what concept I would like examples of, and what level of students I am teaching. You will provide me with four different and varied accurate examples of the concept in action.

You can also provide existing test questions and ask it to create variations. And keep tweaking until it's to your liking.

Creating rubrics and developing comment banks for more efficient grading

Generative AI can be used to create assignments, or to adapt current assignments. A Microsoft "Prompts for EDU" resource page provides a sample prompt to adapt assignments to make them more active:

You could also use it to create rubrics. Like other prompts, the more specific the better. For instance, providing details on the assignment or what you're looking for in a rubric is essential. Good rubrics have criterion, performance bands, weights/points, and descriptors, so asking for some of those elements are useful in an effective prompt. Here's an example (created by an instructor designer colleague Emilie Schiess and presented at the 2023 IU Online Conference):

Please create a 5-criterion writing rubric with 5 performance bands for a 10-page college level research paper written in IMRAD style with at least 15 sources.

Finally, I've started using generative AI tools in the creation of comment banks to aid in grading, using the the following prompt along with the language of my assignment instructions and rubric:

I need a variety of comments to use when providing comments to students for this assignment. Please give me a bank of 5-10 short 1-2 sentence comments that offer a range of feedback. Please make sure the comments relate to the rubric and effective analysis according to the guiding questions. Here's the assignment and rubric that these comments are based on... [add language from assignment + rubric]

And recently, I've started using it to help create short, targeted comments unique for each observation I made while grading. I've added this additional prompt to the response from the previous prompt:

I will now give you some general observations and you will create short 1-3 sentence comments, in my conversational style, that are based on the rubric that I can add to the comments for the student. Based on those observations I want 2-3 sentences that are connected, not independent of another, in one paragraph without quotes marks around it. Make sure all comments start off with something positive, includes constructive suggestions, and encourages students to improve.

Note that the AI is NOT grading the assignment, and I've providing no student data to the AI system. I am only providing general observations or comments that I might made, and asking the AI to craft those comments more fully and in alignment with the assignment instructions and rubrics.

Write, revise, and edit

Generative AI tools can be used to write, or help you write. I've heard people describe it as a draft creator, or as a tool to break writers' block.

For example, you can ask these tools to revise writing to make it more concise. Or to adapt tone for another kind of audience.

Tools like ChatGPT can also be used to come up with ideas, a lot of them, quickly. Mostly, some OK, but maybe there is a diamond in there. Sometimes seeing a large set of ideas can also help with sparking our own creativity.

It'll take a little work, but these can be incredibly useful in writing or other creative processes.

Create simulations and interactions

You might also think about using generative AI in asking students to interact with the AI in an interactive exercise. Mollick has written about this and provided a sample prompt:

I want to do deliberate practice about how to conduct negotiations. You will be my negotiation teacher. You will simulate a detailed scenario in which I have to engage in a negotiation. You will fill the role of one party, I will fill the role of the other. You will ask for my response to in each step of the scenario and wait until you receive it. After getting my response, you will give me details of what the other party does and says. You will grade my response and give me detailed feedback about what to do better using the science of negotiation. You will give me a harder scenario if I do well, and an easier one if I fail.

Resources

There is much being written about these tools, including its role in teaching and learning. I've curated a few items below.