Lesson 4 - Creating Lesson Content with ChatGPT

 

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Workshop Scenario:

Please think of yourself in the following scenario as you complete this workshop.

As you complete this lesson, I want you to imagine that you are an instructional designer at a top e-learning company. You have been tasked with creating a comprehensive e-learning course on customer service skills for a large retail chain. One week into the project, the retail chain contacts you with an urgent request to complete the course in half the time due to unexpected events. While you are confident in your ability to deliver the project on time, you have never created a course of this size and complexity in such a short timeframe before.

Fortunately, you recently started a 24/7 Teach course on how to prompt ChatGPT. With the completion of the first two lessons in the course, you've gained the confidence to prompt ChatGPT to create learning objectives, lesson introductions, and scenarios. You are now ready to begin the next lesson that will teach you how to effectively prompt ChatGPT for creating lesson content, providing you with the skills needed to develop a high-quality course content that meets the needs of the retail chain within the tight deadline.

Your Objective:

By the end of this lesson you should be able to do the following: 

  • Explain how ChatGPT can be used to generate effective lesson content 

  • Create effective lesson prompts for ChatGPT to generate quality lesson content

Important Questions to Answer While Reading:

In order to be successful in this lesson, you must be able to answer these important questions.

  • How can ChatGPT be used to generate effective lesson content?

  • How can you create effective lesson prompts for ChatGPT to generate quality lesson content?

Lesson 4: 

4.1 Strategies for Managing the Limitations of ChatGPT

ChatGPT can save instructional designers time and provide ideas for and generate lesson content. However, in order to use it effectively to create high-quality lesson content that aligns with learning objectives, instructional designers need strategies to manage ChatGPT’s limitations (like potential inaccuracies or incomplete responses).

Here are some strategies to manage the limitations of ChatGPT when generating lesson content:

  1. Research the topic beforehand: Designers should have a good understanding of the topic they want to teach before asking ChatGPT to generate lesson content. This way, they can more easily detect inaccuracies or errors in the responses.

  2. Tailor prompts to audience and learning objectives: Designers should create prompts that are specific to their audience and learning objectives to ensure effective lesson design.

  3. Probe for more detail: If the response provided by ChatGPT is incomplete, designers should use probing questions to gather more information and detail that can be used to develop effective lesson content.

  4. Review and edit generated content: Designers should carefully review the content generated by ChatGPT and edit it as needed to improve not only accuracy but also the alignment of the lesson with the audience, learning objectives, and user experience. This could involve rephrasing content, adding additional information, or removing inaccurate information.

  5. Provide feedback: Designers can also provide feedback to ChatGPT by telling it that the information provided is inaccurate, which can help improve the model's accuracy over time. Designers can also input content with the correct information that ChatGPT can use as a basis for generating future content.

4.2 Characteristics of Effective Prompts

Effective prompts are critical to ensuring that ChatGPT generates quality instructional content. Here are some characteristics of effective prompts:

  1. Clear and specific: Prompts should be clear and specific, providing ChatGPT with a clear understanding of what the instructional content should cover.

  2. Relevant and aligned with learning objectives: Prompts should be relevant and focused on the specific learning objectives that the instructional content is intended to achieve.

  3. Keywords: Prompts that use Blooms-related verbs like "describe" and "explain," can help ensure that the instructional content is aligned with the learning objectives.

While ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for instructional designers, it's important to understand its limitations and use it effectively to create high-quality lesson content. By following the strategies outlined in this lesson, designers can effectively manage the limitations of ChatGPT and create engaging and effective learning experiences that align with their learning objectives.

4.3 Tips to Structure Lesson Prompts

Here are a few steps to structure your lesson prompts:

1.       Prompt for an outline. Ask ChatGPT to create an outline for your lesson using your learning objective(s). Include the learner/audience when necessary.

2.       Restate outline topics. Prompt ChatGPT with each topic in your lesson outline. You can restate your outline topic in the form of a question or using blooms-aligned verbs like “explain” or “describe”. If you provide one outline topic at a time you will get more content. (Note: Don’t ask ChatGPT to write a lesson because it will often produce an outline instead. On the other hand, if you ask ChatGPT to write a blog post, this will generate a response in paragraph form with an informal tone.)

3.       Probe ChatGPT further. Ask ChatGPT to elaborate or probe it with a question that connects to the audience. If there are details in the response that you want ChatGPT to generate more content on, use that information in your follow up prompts. Use prompt stems like, “Explain more about… ” or “What is…?” or “What is the difference between…?” or “Why is … important?”. If you want the generated content to be more relevant to your audience, you can prompt with stems like, “Why is [subtopic] important to [audience]?” or “How can [subtopic] help [audience]?” The more specific you are, the better the results from ChatGPT.

4.4 Practice Creating a Prompt Template

Practice 1

Now practice creating lesson content prompts using the information about part of today’s lesson below.

Lesson Topic: Creating Lesson Content with ChatGPT

Audience: Instructional designer

Learning objectives:

  • Instructional designers will be able to explain the limitations of ChatGPT and strategies to handle those limitations

  • Instructional designers will apply strategies to create effective lesson content prompts

Lesson Outline Excerpt:

  • Explain the limitations of ChatGPT in generating lesson content for instructional designers’ courses

  • Explain strategies to handle the limitations of using ChatGPT to generate lesson content for their courses

Directions: Use the lesson information above to create a lesson topic prompt.

  • Lesson Topic Prompt 1: Explain the limitations of instructional designers using ChatGPT to generate lesson content for their courses

    Lesson Topic Prompt 2: Explain strategies for instructional designers to handle the limitations of using ChatGPT to generate lesson content for their courses

Practice 2

Directions: Imagine that in ChatGPT’s response to your prompt, you notice that an important topic is not included. How could you probe ChatGPT to add information about the need for instructional designers to do their research before using ChatGPT to generate content in order to easily spot inaccuracies.

  • Probing Prompt: Add a strategy explaining how instructional designers need to do their research before using ChatGPT to generate content in order to spot inaccuracies.

    (An “add a strategy” prompt stem was used in this case so that the style and structure of the response would be similar to the other strategies listed in the previous ChatGPT response)

    Other effective prompts that could have been used include, but are not limited to:

    Alternative 1: Why is it important for instructional designers to do their research before using ChatGPT to generate content in order to spot inaccuracies?

    Alternative 2: Explain the importance of instructional designers doing their research before using ChatGPT to generate content in order to spot inaccuracies.

Closing Assessment:

Now that you have reached the end of this lesson, you should know the following:

  • How can ChatGPT be used to generate effective lesson content?

  • How can you create effective lesson prompts for ChatGPT to generate quality lesson content?

Assessment Questions:

Click the tab below to respond to the following assessment question.

  1. What are some strategies that instructional designers can use to manage ChatGPT's limitations?

  2. Explain the characteristics of effective lesson content prompts. List some effective ways to structure lesson prompts.

Discussion Questions:

Connect with the 24/7 Teach community by posting your discussion question responses in the comment section below.

  1. Evaluate your own strengths and areas for improvement in creating and responding to prompts. How can you build on your strengths and address your weaknesses to become a more effective learner and communicator?


 
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