An Educators Guide to ChatGPT

Key points: 

  1. This isn't going away. Newer and even more capable versions are being developed. (Though it may cost $)

  2. Don't ignore it. Talk about it. Kids have already spread the word via social media.

  3. Educate yourself to how it impacts your particular area of expertise.

    • Teachable moments.

    • Drawbacks and errors

    • Traceable or not?

    • Learn how to leverage it as a tool.

Presentation: ChatGPT for Educators

A sample writing lesson

using ChatGPT as a tool (from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/chatgpt-threat-or-menace)

Text generators might help students learn about different writing genres and forms and force serious writers to become stylists. In other words, AI text generators will establish a new baseline for student essays.

In my own small (40-person classes), the students’ five shorter essays (at least 500 words in length) must include four parts:

  1. A detailed prompt input into ChatGPT

  2. The text that ChatGPT “wrote” in response to the prompt

  3. An essay that builds on the ChatGPT foundation, supplemented with additional research that must be cited in a bibliography.

  4. A list of the corrections, revisions and additions that the student made in producing the reworked essay.

We will devote time in class to discussing the text that ChatGPT produced, including its strengths and weaknesses.

Much as AI text generation can, I am convinced, strengthen student writing, AI image generators can inform visual literacy and arts education and set a new bar for artistic creativity. These applications can help students learn about various artistic styles and concepts and analyze an artwork’s distinct elements and techniques and push artists to shift in new directions that AI can’t duplicate.