Activity: Using AI
This page asks you to do two activities:
a. Generate a program of learning
b. Generate an assessment
These activities will help to familiarise you with tailoring prompts. You should never use assessments and programs generated solely by generative AI with no expert teacher intervention. Teacher intervention is vital to ensure the work is appropriate to, and tailored to, your Framework, course, students and context. While an advanced language model, generative AI is not a teacher!
Although AI can analyse text, we do not recommend using AI for assessing student work at this stage of its development. We also do not recommend using AI other than that provided and approved by your school or sector to process any data that would pose a privacy risk to students. All current commercially available AI has in its terms and conditions that people should not be using it to process personal, sensitive, or proprietary data. There have been minor data incidents already, with some ChatGPT users being able to see the titles of others' conversations. For example, if using AI to scaffold your initial work on reports, you may wish to ask about a generic "student" rather than a specific person.
SPRITE
You can use this mnemonic to remember useful additions to your prompts. It doesn't matter if you use one or all of them; even adding one of these suggestions will help you get a better response.
Specificity: tell the tool as clearly as possible what you would like it to create
Parameters: set any exceptions or inclusions, such as “do not include true/false questions in your output”
Role: tell the tool what kind of role you’d like it to take; for example, a friendly teacher, a fictional character, an experienced coach
Iteration: ask the tool questions and get it to refine its output. For example, “can you expand on that paragraph?” or “can you rewrite that text with a greater focus on controversy in the research?”
Text Type: specify the type of text or output you are seeking, e.g., a rubric, a paragraph, a chart, or table
Exemplars: use exemplars to guide the tool; for example, asking to write in the style of a particular literary movement or create in the style of a particular art movement
A sprite is a mythical spirit in European folklore; something like a fairy. An AI can be a helpful sprite, but it might also play tricks; users should keep your wits about them and check anything that doesn’t seem correct.
If you want to skip ahead and read about prompt tailoring and then give it a go on your own, read these blog entries by Ethan Mollick and tailor your own prompts.
https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/using-ai-to-make-teaching-easier
https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/my-class-required-ai-heres-what-ive
Otherwise, there are instructions and examples below. You may find the contrast between what ChatGPT and Bing created to be of interest!
If you would like to see the examples we generated here at the office, they are linked below.
Please note: in one of our sessions, we found that Bing did not want to generate a "lesson plan" but would happily generate a "worksheet". It may take some time to finesse the language you need to use!
Generate a program of learning
What is the purpose of this activity?
AI is not going to generate a perfect plan for your class. The purpose of the task is to experiment with prompting, and to see what an AI can do with a topic and/or text type that you know very well. You will still need to tailor parts manually.
Do this as one conversation so you can copy/paste the whole thing into your workbook. We have copied versions from ChatGPT and Bing AI. You may find it interesting to do the same if you have access to both.
Give your Chatbot a simple lesson plan request.
Our examples:
Please create a program of learning about Huxley's novel Brave New World
Prompt: create a series of plans for four lessons for the teaching of conditional probability to senior secondary students. You can assume that they know the basics of probability, but will need refreshers on dependent and independent events.
This gives us a basic outline of activities that one might do.
Now get more specific. Give it a year group, tell it what age group you're looking for, and give it a timeframe.
Our examples:
GPT/Bing, can you expand this program so that it could be used by a teacher who has six weeks to teach the novel "Brave New World" to a class of year 12 Literature students?
For each lesson, provide 2 example questions with their solutions along with 5 questions for students to answer
Now get more specific. Give it a year group, tell it what age group you're looking for, and give it a timeframe.
Our examples:
GPT/Bing, can you expand this program so that it could be used by a teacher who has six weeks to teach the novel "Brave New World" to a class of year 12 Literature students?
The response we got is fine, but it's not tailored to the ACT senior secondary system. It's also quite basic, particularly ChatGPT's response. It's not exactly revolutionary to suggest that you might study a novel's characters when studying that novel...
Let's finesse the response.
Navigate to your course: https://www.bsss.act.edu.au/act_senior_secondary_system/curriculum/bsss_courses
Select the goals and content you want to be added into the program of learning, and copy them in. We did not select all the goals; just the ones we wanted included. These are from the Literature T course.
Our example:
Please rewrite the six-week program to explicitly target the following goals and content with reference to Brave New World: By the end of this unit, students: • understand the relationship between language, culture and identity • develop their own analytical responses by synthesising and challenging other interpretations • create oral, written and multimodal texts that experiment with literary style. Evaluate the ways in which literary texts represent culture and identity including: • how readers are influenced to respond to their own and others’ cultural experiences • the power of language to represent ideas, events and people in particular ways • how cultural perceptions are challenged or supported• using appropriate linguistic, stylistic and critical terminology to analyse and evaluate texts • evaluating their own and others’ ideas and points of view using logic and evidence
Let's have a go at getting it to expand on something. Pick a lesson from the generated plan and ask the AI to write you some worksheets for it.
Our example:
Can you please write me two worksheets for Week 1; one worksheet generally about the concept of language and its relationship to culture and identity, and one worksheet about the language use in the first few chapters of Brave New World?
Optional: if you are working in an area with data or text, try pasting some of the data in there and asking the AI "What stands out to you about this?"
Generate a task and rubric
What is the purpose of this activity?
The purpose of this task is to demonstrate how AI can be used to form a basic task that a savvy user can build on. It is not intended that the end-point of this task is a finished, polished assessment; it will still need teacher intervention. What is is, however, is a start that is beyond a blank page.
Same as last time, try to do this in one conversation, or copy from the conversations. Please copy these into your workbook when you're happy with them. Again, an assumption of this task is that you are working with a field you are knowledgeable about, and comfortable within, so that you can see the AI's current strengths and weaknesses.
Start by asking the AI for some ideas.
Our examples:
GPT, I would like to set my students a performance assignment where they work in the theatrical style of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Can you give me some ideas?
Bing, I would like to set a digital photography assignment for my senior secondary students. Do you know anything about the photography course in the ACT Senior Secondary System?
Create an assignment on bivariate data aimed at senior secondary students.
2. Select one idea and ask the AI to expand on it.
Our examples
Can you please write assessment task instructions for option 3?
If I'm teaching Studies of Photography, what would be a good practical assignment for my students? We only have access to digital cameras.
3. Finesse the idea.
Our examples:
Please rewrite the assignment instructions to focus the assessment on the actual performance of the piece, including instructions as to how to ensure all group members are involved fairly and can be marked live on the day by the teacher.
I think these assignment ideas are too simple. Can you suggest some ideas aimed at senior secondary students studying the BSSS course Studies of Photography, specialising in digital photography?
I'd like to use option one, photojournalism. Can you please write the assignment instructions for a major project for Year 11 and 12 students in photojournalism, focussing on the photographic and artistic processes involved?
Create an assignment on conditional probability for senior secondary students. This must be a report and must include some kind of proof question as well as a link to real world applications, along with some historical usage.
4. If you'd like to add something specific to the task, this is a good time to do it.
Our examples:
Can you write a risk assessment statement for the students performing in public, including some of the key risks, and what the students should do in response?
Can you go into more detail about the requirements for the images? Both in terms of how images tell a story, and what you mean by well-composed, well-lit, well-focused and well-edited.
Prompt: create a series of plans for four lessons for the teaching of conditional probability to senior secondary students. You can assume that they know the basics of probability, but will need refreshers on dependent and independent events.
5. Cool! Now we need a rubric. Ask the program for a rubric.
Our examples:
Can you please write a rubric for assessing the performance?
(Bing -- note that this is Internet connected so retrieved the standards for us, removing the need for step 6) Can you generate a rubric for this assignment? Please incorporate the BSSS achievement standards for Arts in your rubric.
6. Give the AI the criteria you want it to work with. In the ACT, assessments are written to the Achievement Standards, so let's give it the achievement standards from the Framework. Let's assume this is a Year 12 task. I pasted the achievement standards in after the question when asking ChatGPT, but for ease of reading, have not replicated that here.
Our wording:
Can you please use the following achievement standards as a guide and rewrite the rubric for assessing the performance to include the fundamental skills and knowledge in the achievement standards?
7. If it hasn't generated a table, you need to ask it to. Ask it specifically for a table, and specifically for the criteria you want.
Our examples:
Please rewrite this rubric as a table, incorporating criterion 1, 2 and 4 only.
8. If possible, ask the AI to create a sample response to the question. If it doesn't give you a perfect answer, finesse it. How easy it is to answer?