AI as a Faculty Assistant to Develop Learning Activities
Generative AI can be useful as a faculty assistant in multiple ways when it comes to teaching and learning. Like a human assistant, it can be a partner with which to brainstorm, organize, and save time. As with any generative AI tool, the recommendation would be to take the results and analyze, edit, and modify as appropriate. It is not suggested that you take any genAI results and use them without further analysis. When you get any results from genAI, you can continue prompting to ask for changes or modifications based on what you are looking for. The best results will come after some trial and error and refinement of your prompts. Here are a few examples of how the tools can be used:
It can be challenging to come up with engaging and interesting activities to have your students participate in to learn and practice course content. This is especially true with remote learning. GenAI can help suggest activities for your class sessions. After it offers a list of suggestions, you can then ask it to expand on the ones you are interested in with complete lesson plans. You can also prompt it to create activities that are measurable or align with certain course or module objectives.
Sample prompt:
Act as an instructional designer. I am teaching a graduate level course on _______. Give me ten ideas for an engaging online activity to assess my students on the topic of _______.
Then, Part 2 : Expand on choice ___with a full lesson plan and provide a rubric. Rule: Make sure the lesson has something measurable for me to grade.
Creating case studies or scenarios for your students to engage with can be time-consuming and often can be difficult. GenAI can assist by quickly creating case studies and scenarios that align with your course needs. You can then choose which ones to use, or create your own versions based on the results you get.
Sample prompts:
I am a _______ professor teaching students about/how to _______. Develop ten case studies for a _______ student involving situations where _______. Be detailed and include _______.
I am a professor of _______ teaching graduate students _______. Create four scenarios which involve _______.
Students may benefit when course concepts are shown in multiple ways, applications, variations, and examples. GenAI can help create these varied examples and explanations of concepts.
Sample prompt:
I am a _______ professor teaching ______ students about the concept of _______. Can you create five examples to explain this concept?
GenAI can be utilized as an assistant to analyze a lecture and give you feedback on elements such as structure, tone, alignment to objectives, cognitive load, etc.
Sample prompts:
I am a _______ professor giving a lecture on _______. Analyze my lecture and give me feedback on structure. Can the structure be improved in any way?
I am a _______ professor giving a lecture on _______. Analyze my lecture and give me feedback on where I could add personal perspectives/professional context to make the lecture more engaging.
You may want to have a genAI help brainstorm to come up with potential learning objectives for a course, or module objectives that align with course objectives. You can then adapt the results to use in your course.
Sample prompt:
I am a _______ professor teaching _______. I will give you a set of course objectives. Can you create module objectives for a unit on _______ that align with and support the course objectives? Rule: Use Bloom’s taxonomy to ensure that the objectives are measurable.
When creating a new course or updating an old one, genAI tools can help you brainstorm how to organize the course and what to include.
Sample prompt:
Create an outline for an undergraduate course on _______. I am attaching the course objectives. Break the course into 16 weeks. Be sure to include _______ and _______, etc.
Generative AI can help with the often-difficult task of coming up with assessment questions. It can create questions in any format (multiple-choice, open-ended, essay, etc.). It can help create larger question banks for your assessments. And it will also give you an answer key. The tools can even be used to develop questions that are specific to a lecture you give or a video-transcript, a video the students were assigned to watch, or a document they were assigned to read.
Sample prompt:
I am a professor teaching a graduate course in _______. I have attached a video transcript on the topic of _______. Create ten multiple-choice questions to assess whether the students retained the information in the video. Also, provide me with an answer key.
Students may benefit from a chart, graph, or other type of visual representation of course materials that are only explained with text and/or data. GenAI can be used to create these representations in the requested format, type of graph, etc. It is worthwhile to note that when it comes to images and visual representations, you will need to explore the tools to see which does the best job.
Sample prompt:
I am a professor teaching a graduate course in _______. I will attach some data that are is discussed in our text. Create a bar graph that illustrates the data for the students.
Another way that genAI can assist faculty is in creating rubrics for assignments. You can attach assignment instructions and/or objectives to make the rubric aligned to your needs, and then modify as needed, or use the results as a starting point to create your own rubric.
Sample prompt:
I am a professor teaching _______. I am attaching a set of assignment instructions as well as module objectives that are supported by this assignment. Create a rubric for the assignment. Include at least five levels of criteria. Make the rubric add up to 20 points.
GenAI can be a tool to take a first look and get some preliminary analysis of student work. It is important to note that student work should only be analyzed using Microsoft Copilot, which is an NSU-approved tool. This will ensure data privacy for the students’ work and make sure their work isn’t used to train the AI model or shared online. Even with MS Copilot, it is a good practice to de-identify the students’ work by not including their name when you upload their work.
Sample prompt:
I am a professor teaching _______. I am attaching assignment instructions, and I would like you to analyze the students’ submissions to summarize what their claim is, and how their claim is supported by evidence, and whether they fulfilled the requirements of the instructions. When you are ready, let me know and I’ll start with the first paper.