AI for Professional Tasks
Introduction
The following quote from the UNESCO Guiding Framework on AI and Education frames this balance by stating,
“Humans are required to frame the problem; formulate the questions; select, clean and label the data; design or choose the algorithms; decide how the pieces fit together; draw conclusions and make judgments according to values.”
AI as an Assistant for Professional Tasks
When using AI to perform professional tasks, consider the following:
Is the AI tool making decisions for me, or am I making informed decisions using information from the AI tool?
Ex. A table of pros vs cons, asking for different perspectives, asking for missed considerations
How do you plan to revise the output provided?
Can you fact-check the information, or can you ask someone to fact-check for you?
Are you providing enough information to the Gen AI tool to generate an effective prompt?
Consider the CORE prompting strategies.
Citing Generative AI Tools
Consider if it's necessary and/or appropriate to disclose the use of AI tools for your professional tasks
If citing Generative AI tools, check this link for a guide on how to cite in APA, MLA, Chicago, and other styles.
Considerations and Tips
PLAN
1. Identify personal strengths and areas of value in your current workflow.
Review your job description.
Discuss with your colleagues about areas of workflow that could be altered.
Reflect on your areas of growth in your Professional Growth Plan.
2. Identify areas of demand in your current workflow.
Map out tasks for a typical day, week, month or year.
Prioritize tasks according to urgency and importance as well as personal agency and authority required.
Consider ways that AI might help you to complete tasks, starting with those higher in your priority list.
3. Research various platforms and determine the best feature set for the task you want to complete.
See the EdTech Summit presentation: From A-Z (Let's talk tech tools and AI!), a compiled list of AI tools from November 2023 with many teacher related platforms.
4. Review privacy policies and terms of use to determine which tool is right for you.
Refer to the EdTech Tools Privacy Review Database for further information about platforms that have been reviewed. Have your principal request a review of a new platform for use with students.
5. Match the tasks with the AI platform of choice to determine how AI can expand your current offerings.
Be specific about which tasks you will use AI tools with, i.e. email review for tone.
Start slow and add tasks one at a time for more accurate measurement of effectiveness.
6. Establish personal goals, draft measures and reflection points for an effective change to your workflow.
Add goals to your professional growth plan. Share them with your administrator or supervisor.
Determine measures that are already available, i.e. tracking of time usage in Google Calendar, and measures you will need to track, i.e. feelings of accomplishment or balance in your work day.
1. identify strengths 2. identify demands 3. research tools 4. review for privacy 5. match task and tool 6. set goals
IMPLEMENT
7. Experiment and implement the use of a platform over a set period of time.
Learn about the details of prompting to improve responses.
Whenever possible, use appropriate details including role, context information, tone, length, and complexity. See AI Prompt Generation for more details.
8. Critically review materials to ensure accuracy and relevance to the prompt you submitted.
Be aware that responses can have hidden biases based on the dataset being used.
AI responses are often reductive or oversimplified in nature and may not represent all points of view.
AI often provides surface level information. Be sure to reprompt for depth.
9. Cite your sources. If you have used an AI tool in your work, determine when and how you will disclose the use of the tool to the audience.
7. experiment 8. critically review 9. cite sources
EVALUATE
10. Reflect on your personal goals and measures periodically to adjust your use of the AI platform.
Repeat steps 1-9, exploring new tools for new tasks.
10. reflect on goals