AI How Teachers are Using ChatGPT
OpenAI has released a guide for teachers to effectively use ChatGPT in their classrooms. The guide includes suggested prompts, an explanation of how ChatGPT works, its limitations, the efficacy of AI detectors, and how to address bias. Here is a comprehensive overview of the latest release as of August 31, 2023:
1. Role-Playing Challenging Conversations
— Dr. Helen Crompton, a professor at Old Dominion University, encourages students to use ChatGPT as a stand-in for various personas to explore information in a conversational setting, helping them understand material with added nuance and new perspectives.
2. Building Quizzes, Tests, and Lesson Plans
— Fran Bellas, a professor at Universidade da Coruña in Spain, recommends using ChatGPT to craft quizzes, exams, and lesson plans using modern or culturally relevant examples.
3. Assisting Non-English Speakers
— Dr. Anthony Kaziboni**, Head of Research at the University of Johannesburg, encourages students to use ChatGPT for translation assistance and to improve their English writing and conversational skills.
4. Teaching Critical Thinking
— Geetha Venugopal, a high school teacher in India, teaches students to use AI tools responsibly, encouraging critical thinking about the information provided by ChatGPT and verifying it through other primary resources.
Example Prompts for Educators
OpenAI shares example prompts developed by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick at Wharton Interactive to help educators get started with GPT-4. These prompts are designed to assist in creating lesson plans, developing effective explanations, examples, and analogies, helping students learn by teaching, and creating an AI tutor. Here are the categories of the prompts:
1. Creating Lesson Plans
— The prompt guides teachers in creating a customized lesson plan by understanding the topic, grade level, existing knowledge of the students, and the learning goal for the lesson.
2. Creating Effective Explanations, Examples, and Analogies
— This prompt helps in developing clear and simple explanations, examples, and analogies for a topic, considering the learning level and the background of the students.
3. Help Students Learn by Teaching
— Here, the AI acts as a student sharing knowledge on a chosen topic, encouraging the teacher to evaluate the explanations and applications provided.
4. Creating an AI Tutor
— This prompt is designed to help students understand concepts through explanations, examples, and analogies tailored to their learning level and prior knowledge.
Important Notes for Using the Prompts
- The prompts are starting points and teachers are encouraged to modify them as needed.
- Teachers should review the output from the model critically.
- The model may not always produce correct information, emphasizing the role of the teacher as the expert in charge of the material.
