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ChatGPT: Assignments

Resources on ChatGPT for faculty

Working with and against ChatGPT

The goal of this page is to present examples and resources for thinking about how you can use, or work against, ChatGPT in your classroom. As Spring 2023 is the first full semester with ChatGPT available publicly, the examples are limited and there hasn't been enough time to reflect on the outcomes of this work, particularly in peer-reviewed formats. This page will be updated as more information is released. 

Different Approaches to ChatGPT

Five ways to use Social Annotation with and against ChatGPT from Hypothesis explores five ways of using ChatGPT and Hypothesis (a social annotation tool):

  1. Writing throughout a course rather than just at the end
  2. Writing in context, writing in community
  3. Students annotating their own writing
  4. Students writing with AI writing tools
  5. Annotating the writing of AI chatbots

My class required AI. Here's what I've learned so far by Ethan Mollick from his newsletter One Useful Thing:

  • Without training, everyone uses AI wrong
  • Approach 1: Minor variations, letting the AI do the work
  • Approach 2: Adding restrictions and user knowledge
  • Approach 3: Co-editing

 

Artificial Intelligence and Teaching: A Community Conversation from Yale University (video, 57:30)

Prompted By: A Conversation about Writing and Authorship Prompted by Artificial Intelligence from University of Maryland (video, 1:30:26)

Example Assignments

Sample ChatGPT assignments:

Alex Gil (Yale) Introduction to Digital Humanities: Computational Approaches to Culture

(Editing the) Final Paper
The final paper for this class may be the strangest final paper you have submitted for a grade in your whole life. You won’t be writing this one alone. You won’t be writing it with another person either, not directly in any case. You also won’t even be writing the first draft. No, AI will do that. The way this works is simple: pick a topic related to your current research. Using GPT3, or GPT4 (if it’s out already) you will have the machine write the first pass. Your job is to correct and edit the work to bring it up to your standards. You will submit the original AI draft, and your final version.

Ryan Watkins (George Washington University) Update Your Course Syllabus for chatGPT

Prompt Competition
Identify a major question or challenge in your field or discipline that chatGPT could write about. Preferably a question with no clear single right answer. Have students collaborate (in pairs or small teams) on developing 5 to 10 criteria for assessing chatGPT responses to the major question. For example, chatGPT’s output references more than one theoretical perspective. Ask students to individually write a prompt for chatGPT to answer the major question. Have students use their criteria to judge the responses of other students (in the pair or small team), and rate the chatGPT prompts/responses from best to worst.

Reflect and Improve
Ask students to individually identify a major question or challenge in your field or discipline that chatGPT could write about. Have students use chatGPT to write a response to their question or challenge. Ask students to reflect on chatGPT’s output (e.g., what is correct, incorrect, what they don’t know if it is correct or incorrect, what should they look up elsewhere to verify, what should they ask chatGPT next). Using Track Changes in MS Word or Suggesting in Google Docs, have students improve the output of chatGPT (e.g., correcting errors or misinformation, expanding on shallow content). Have students submit their prompt and the improved chatGPT response with their added content highlighted.