In late November, OpenAI and Common Sense Media launched a free ai course for K-12 educators designed to help educators use ai tools in their classrooms effectively. After trying it out, I was impressed with the course from the ai creators and non-profit organization.
The course, which lasts less than an hour, incorporates short videos and readings, quizzes and interactive activities using ai. Overall, it provides a solid overview of teaching with ai, with a focus on generating effective prompts in an educational setting. Although some lessons may seem a little basic to those already familiar with ChatGPT or another generative ai tool, the course does a thorough job of providing an overview of ai, including protecting student data and ensuring that a human instructor is always in the driver's seat.
Here's a closer look at OpenAI and Common Sense Media ai Course for Teachers.
One of the focuses of the course is how to write effective ai prompts in various environments. This portion is particularly useful. I imagine it will help many users get more out of ChatGPT and other tools.
A key part of this segment of the course is a detailed discussion of the CRE Framework for writing ai prompts:
C for context. Users must provide context for each message. For example, the course text recommends a line like “Imagine that you teach at a high school that has the following demographics.”
R for role. The course recommends us to provide ChatGPT with information about the role it should play when generating text. For example: “You are a high school biologist.”
E for Expectations. ChatGPT works best when users create messages that detail specific expectations. For example, the course recommends language like “Write a 15-minute biology lesson plan.”
For me, I intuitively write prompts that have clear expectations, but I have started to learn. I often fall short on the “role” and “context” parts of the prompt.
Examples of effective instructions
Beyond providing an introduction to the CRE Framework, the course offers a PDF file filled with prompt templates. Educators can use these to create their own context-specific prompts, which is helpful. Equally important, I felt that by reading them I got a better idea of what an effective regimen entails.
For me, reading some of these, as well as the high-quality guideline examples provided in the session, helped me better understand how I can improve my own guideline writing. For example, here is a template included in the messages library:
Immediate: Prepare a short survey containing 10 questions for students about how they feel about (insert topic)
Context: You want to understand students' opinions on (topic)
Role: An educational survey designer.
Expectation: Develop a concise survey that gathers meaningful feedback to share with parents.
Other course highlights
Since this course was co-created by OpenAI, it is no surprise that it promotes the use of ai in education. However, the course strives to address potential issues of bias and privacy. Instructors are advised that some versions of ChatGPT input data for future training and that personally identifiable information about a student should never be shared with ChatGPT. Most of us already know this, but it is a good and important point to make in any discussion about the use of ai.
The course also covers the Human-In-The-Loop framework, which places the use of ai in education firmly under the control and direction of a human being. This highlights the vital role that teachers play in education, regardless of how technology is integrated, which is another important point and I was glad to see it included.
Maybe I only change two aspects of the course. The first module is very basic and it would be nice to have the option to try it out. Secondly, I wanted a bit more feedback when it comes to speed writing, as the CRE Framework left me a bit confused. Should you write the message and then make sure it covers the context, role and expectations? Or should I literally use language like “for context, I'm teaching a master's level workshop on topic x…” I'll experiment and find the answer on my own, but some additional guidance might be helpful.
Despite these nit-picking complaints, overall I found this course really useful and efficient. It's a great way to get better at using ai and learn the basics of message writing best practices, all in under an hour.
