Module 9: Teaching in the Age of Generative AI  

In this module you will consider how to best interact with generative AI when asking it to create products you can use with your students. 

Generative AI seems to be everything everywhere, all at once. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, and just two months later ChatGPT had 100 million active users—the fastest online application to reach that mark at the time (citation). Its growth and success spurred the release of countless other generative AI tools including Bard by Google’s parent company Alphabet. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Bard have been especially popular because they can engage in human-like, natural-feeling conversations. Additionally, When prompted, LLMs can “write most things in most styles” (Borup, 2023). Generative AI can also quickly create images, audio, video, and other products such as presentations. 

This explosion of generative AI is what Christopher Nolan has called AI developers’ “Openheimer moment,” because they have unleashed Generative AI on the world without fully understanding the impact it will have. Sam Altman, Open AI’s CEO, told the U.S. Congress that “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.” Christina Montgomery, IBM’s Vice President and Chief Privacy & Trust Officer, added that generative AI will change every job—for better or worse (citation).

Generative AI is especially capable of disrupting education—for better or worse. AI has been shown to successfully complete many of the tasks and assessments commonly performed by students, leading to well-founded fears of cheating. LLMs also convincingly provide inaccurate and biased information that can lead to misinformation and misconceptions. These threats to current models of teaching and learning led many schools to ban generative AI. However, those bans were largely lifted once it became clear that there was no putting the AI genie back into the bottle, leaving teachers and administrators to wrestle with challenges and benefits that generative AI brings to education. 

Students are already using generative, and so should teachers. Generative AI is LARGE topic that could easily fill this entire course. In this module we will focus on strategies for interacting with generative AI to create products you can use with your students. 

Exploration 

For this, we are focusing on Large Language Models (LLMs) that can generate naturally sounding text. ChatGPT is the most popular LLM but for this module you can use any LLM that you like. The nice thing about ChatGPT is that you can use it without an account: https://chat.openai.com/  However, I still recommend that you create a free account. It's a better experience. It also saves all of your interactions so you will not accidentally lose your work. With the free account you can also generate images using DALL-E. 

Part 1: Play (60 minutes)

Once you have selected an LLM, take some time to pay and explore what it can do. Select a course topic and then ask it to several of the following based on that topic: 

• Create a lesson plan for [course topic]

• Write a poem about [course topic]

• Create a story about [course topic]

• Write an essay on [course topic]

• Write an essay outline on [course topic]

• Create an grading rubric for [course assessment]

• Provide feedback on a previous lesson plan

• Role pay as a historical person ("I would like you to pretend to be [person related to your course topic] and engage in a natural conversation with me")

Part 2: Explore Engineering Prompt Frameworks (60 minutes) 

Now that you have played around with an LLM to see what it can do, let's actually consider how we can carefully engineer a prompt to improve the output so that it is something that we can actually use. There are a lot of prompt engineering frameworks. The infographic below outlines 10 of them. This page also has prompt templates for each of the frameworks that you should read. 

GIF created by Shushant Lakhyani. Source: https://medium.com/@slakhyani20/10-chatgpt-prompt-engineering-frameworks-you-need-to-know-41d4b76ed384 

Share (60 minutes)

Share what you created and how you created it, in this document. Be sure to share your copy of the Google Document with jeredborup@gmail.com. When you are finished filling out the document (and the "Discuss" activity below), you can submit it below using the Google Form. 

Discuss (60 minutes)

Use this Padlet to share your thoughts and take aways from the experience. What impressed you and what didn't? How do you see it changing how you teach and how your students learn?  Think beyond creating lesson plans. 

Reply to at least two other comments. Remember to include your name with your posts. 

While it's not required, you are invited to share what you created by posting the link to your Google Document. I received feedback that some in the course would appreciate to see what others are creating in the course.