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Discussions & Belonging
Discussions & Belonging
The literature shows that students want to feel a sense of belonging to their learning community. In addition to improving knowledge retention, class discussions can help increase students' sense of belonging which can help with persistence, success, and completion (Cho, et al., 2023).
Discussions help underrepresented and marginalized students express themselves.
Discussions, in-person, synchronous, or asynchronous, support deeper interactions about challenging topics and can create space for difficult conversations.
Discussions encourage critical thinking and improve student learning outcomes in both in-person and online learning environments (McDavid & Shepherd, 2021).
Working on the Work
Use ChatGPT to:
Design questions with enough ambiguity to spur discussion (Darby, 2020).
Write prompts that seek to achieve greater understanding rather than finite answers or solutions (Sousa, 2021).
Help revise more complex discussions.
Create more engaging topics, guided questions, and conversation starters.
Provide choices for students with Discussion prompts based on student ability. (Chandy, 2023; Peralta Equity Rubric, 2020).
Connect course content to students' lives and experiences
Upload the Text: Start by uploading the reading material or text that you want to use to generate discussion prompts. This can be done by copying and pasting the text into the chat interface or providing a file upload option if the chatbot has that capability.
Text Analysis: ChatGPT analyzes the text to identify key concepts, themes, and important passages. It may also consider the structure and organization of the text, such as headings, subheadings, or chapters.
Identify Complexity Levels: Determine the desired complexity levels for discussion prompts. For example, you may want to create prompts for different student groups or levels of proficiency (e.g., beginner, intermediate, advanced).
Dynamic Prompt Generation: Use ChatGPT to dynamically generate discussion prompts based on the profiles and preferences of each student or group. For example, based on the content of the subject of the text, if a student showed a particular interest during the pre and post-reading and oral discussions, ChatGPT can generate prompts related to that subject.
Real-Time Adaptation: ChatGPT should be able to adapt prompts in real time as students' interests and goals evolve. This adaptability ensures that the prompts remain relevant and engaging for all students (OpenAI, 2023).
Emphasize process over product.
Scaffolding assignments into smaller checkpoints can deter—though not prevent—unauthorized use of generative AI. Instead, if the assignment is AI-enabled, working in steps provides the opportunity to guide students through using AI effectively and ethically. This allows you to give feedback throughout the process and see how students develop ideas and change their thinking over time. It also invites metacognition; a final portfolio, for example, lets students create a narrative about the work they have completed from start to finish and explain their choices.
Other ways to demonstrate the process:
Outlines or proposals
Annotated bibliographies
Drafts and feedback (Leary et al., 2023).
Math Instructors
Inclusive Problem-Solving:
Scenario: In a college-level statistics course, students have diverse backgrounds and varying levels of familiarity with the subject.
In a college statistics course, the instructor conducts a survey on the first day to gauge the students' prior experience with statistics. The results show a wide range of familiarity with the subject:
Sarah, a mathematics major, has taken advanced statistics courses in high school and is very comfortable with statistical concepts.
John, an economics major, has a basic understanding of statistics from a previous introductory course and is looking to deepen his knowledge.
Maria, a psychology major, has some exposure to statistics but finds it challenging and hopes to improve her skills.
David, a biology major, has never taken a statistics course and is anxious about the subject.
Lisa, a business major, has taken a statistics course before but struggled with it and is retaking the class to improve her understanding.
This diverse mix of students with varying levels of familiarity with statistics poses a unique challenge and opportunity for the instructor to tailor the discussions or course to meet the needs of each student.
Use of ChatGPT: The math instructor integrates ChatGPT during in-class problem-solving sessions. Students can pose questions in natural language, and ChatGPT provides step-by-step explanations in real-time.
Impact: This approach ensures that all students, regardless of their prior knowledge, can actively participate in discussions, ask questions, and receive immediate feedback. It promotes inclusivity and engagement within the classroom (OpenAI, 2023).
Differentiating Discussion Prompts
Differentiating Discussion Prompts
(For any subject or discipline)
(For any subject or discipline)
Meeting the needs of ALL students, ESL, Basic Skills, and Credit students- provide summaries of readings and samples of discussion post prompts at any level.
A teaching approach that tailors instruction to meet individual student needs (personalized instruction).
Personalize reading material for students, so they can respond to discussion prompts at their level.
Collaborate: In groups or individually, students can practice scoring sample discussion posts using an AI-generated rubric.
Create Buy-in: Along with revising samples, students can score samples generated by ChatGPT. This could be done as a norming process for the class as a whole or in small groups with students discussing their scores and reasoning. The emphasis of this exercise would be less about the “score” given to a sample, and more about the discussion around the writing the students do.
By generating discussion content tailored to individual learning styles and capabilities, ChatGPT aids teachers in implementing differentiated instruction effectively. This approach can lead to improved student engagement, better learning outcomes, and a more inclusive educational environment.
(Ferlazzo, 2023; Gomez-Ramirez, 2023)
How to create prompts using ChatGPT
Use test scores or other data to personalize assignments for students.
The League of Innovation for Community Colleges
ChatGPT and AI's Effect on Community Colleges
Let's Practice
Your Turn:
Open your ChatGPT account.
Copy the text of this article, Conformity, and paste it into ChatGPT.
Ask ChatGPT to provide a summary (change the level from advanced to beginner)
Ask ChatGPT to list the central idea, main ideas, and theme.
Use the text to create pre and post-reading discussion questions, so you can identify gaps in student knowledge and address levels of engagement.
Now ask ChatGPT to write three Discussion prompts. Once you receive the prompts, continue to prompt ChatGPT with more specificity. For example, pick one of the prompts, ask ChatGPT to simplify the vocabulary or the overall prompt, or ask ChatGPT to write a more advanced prompt, etc. Play around with these steps for a few minutes.
You can now copy these into Canvas Discussions and use them to better meet the needs of your students.
Ask ChatGPT to write a rubric for GED, ESL, Basic Skills, Literacy, Credit support, etc. students. (Of course, revise all ChatGPT responses to fit your students and your class).
Create and Revise Rubrics Using ChatGPT
Click on the link below
Sample prompt: What information does ChatGPT need to create a rubric?
(Try it with different metrics that fit your class.)
Response from ChatGPT:
To create a Discussion Post rubric, ChatGPT doesn't require specific information to generate the entire rubric from scratch. Instead, you should provide the key components and details needed to define the rubric's criteria, levels of achievement, and descriptions. Here is the information you should provide:
Purpose and Objectives: Clearly articulate the purpose of the rubric and the specific objectives or skills you want to assess. For example, you might state that the rubric is for evaluating a student's essay on a particular topic.
Criteria: List the criteria you want to assess. Criteria are the specific aspects of the work you're evaluating. For an essay, criteria might include organization, content, grammar, and citations, among others.
Levels of Achievement: Define the scale or levels of achievement. Common scales include 1-4, 0-5, or words like "Excellent," "Proficient," "Basic," and "Poor." Specify the number of levels and their labels (e.g., 4 levels labeled A, B, C, D).
Descriptions for Each Level: For each level on the scale, provide detailed descriptions of what constitutes performance at that level for each criterion. Use clear language and, if necessary, include examples or characteristics of work at that level.
Weighting (if applicable): Determine whether certain criteria or components are more important than others. If so, specify the weighting of each criterion (e.g., Organization: 30%, Content: 40%, Grammar: 20%, Citations: 10%).
Examples (if helpful): Provide any examples or samples of work that represent each level of achievement for each criterion. This can make the rubric more explicit and clear.
Rubric Format: Indicate the format you prefer for the rubric, such as a table, a document, or a spreadsheet. Specify any additional information or branding to be included in the rubric.
Evaluation Context: If the rubric is intended for a specific class or assessment, provide information about the context, such as the course name, assignment title, or date.
Sample Rubric Created by ChatGPT
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