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Teaching & Learning Center: Gen AI

Use this guide as a central hub to all the Professional Development tracks CPTC has to offer

Welcome to the Generative AI Corner of the CPTC LibGuide!

Welcome to the CPTC TLC Generative AI Page!

Here you can find some basic information about Gen AI.

CPTC 2024 Opening Day Material

Slides:

AI Introduction

 

 

Click this button to open ChatGPT

 

Prompting Instructions: The following text is the ‘prompt’ you will modify, copy and paste into the ChatGPT chat box. Choose on or more of the following prompt examples and copy and paste it into ChatGPT. Don't forget to change the [information about you]:


Prompt 1

Role: You are a [Your Job Title] at Clover Park Technical College.

Context: ALICE students (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) comprise a significant portion of our student body. They face challenges like financial strain, balancing work and study, and accessing basic necessities.

Task: Identify 10 specific actions you can take in your role as a [Your Job Title] to support ALICE students and help them feel cared for at CPTC.

Format: List your actions in a table with three columns:

  • Action Item
  • Description
  • Implementation Timeframe (Short-term, Medium-term, Long-term)

Prompt 2

Role: As a staff member in the [Your Department/Area] at Clover Park Technical College.

Context: Understanding and addressing the unique needs of ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) students is crucial for their success and well-being.

Task: Develop a plan outlining how your department can adjust its services or programs to better support ALICE students.

Format: Outline your plan with the following sections:

  • Current Services
  • Identified Needs of ALICE Students
  • Proposed Adjustments or Additions
  • Expected Outcomes and Benefits

Prompt 3

Role: You are a faculty member teaching [Your Subject/Course] at Clover Park Technical College.

Context: ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) students often juggle work, family, and education, making traditional academic schedules and methods challenging.

Task: Create a list of teaching strategies or course modifications that can make your classes more accessible and supportive for ALICE students.

Format: Provide each strategy with a brief explanation of how it benefits ALICE students, organized in bullet points.


Prompt 4

Role: As an employee at Clover Park Technical College working in [Your Role/Department].

Context: ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) students may feel disconnected from campus resources and support systems due to time constraints and other pressures.

Task: Propose initiatives or programs that could enhance engagement and provide targeted support to ALICE students within your sphere of influence.

Format: Describe each initiative with:

  • Name of Initiative
  • Objective
  • Implementation Steps
  • Resources Needed
  • Potential Impact on ALICE Students

Prompt 5

Role: You are a member of the CPTC community in your role as [Your Job Title].

Context: Collaboration across different roles and departments can lead to comprehensive support for ALICE students.

Task: Suggest ways you and your colleagues can work together to address the needs of ALICE students.

Format: List collaborative ideas with:

  • Collaborative Action
  • Departments or Colleagues Involved
  • How It Supports ALICE Students
  • Steps to Initiate Collaboration

At the TLC at CPTC, we are interested in staying on top of all the trends related to teaching and learning. We believe that AI will change how teachers teach and learners learn. Here are some pieces of information that we've found related to gaining a basic understanding of generative AI, how it works and it's implications on education. We believe it's important to have FLUENCY in generative AI.

Foster understanding of how AI works
Lead in deciding when to use AI
Uphold the value of AI
Embrace effective prompt engineering
Navigate and evaluate AI output
Contribute human value to AI
Yield to digital adaptability

*anagram created by ChatGPT*

Definitions - a brief introduction to a rabbit hole of AI and AI-related definitions

Although the first conversation about artificial intelligence is credited to have started with Alan Turing in 1950, the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) was coined by John McCarthy in 1955 referring to the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. AI broadly refers to any human-like behavior displayed by a machine or system. AI makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks. 

Sources


If you are interested in learning about how to utilize various Gen AI tools for supporting your instruction in the higher education setting, consider checking out our Generative AI in Higher Education Canvas Course!

Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that gives computers the ability to learn without explicitly being programmed. Machine learning is behind chatbots and predictive text, language translation apps, the media your streaming services suggest to you, and how your social media feeds are presented. 

Source

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence that is capable of generating new content, such as images, music, or text, that is similar to or indistinguishable from content created by humans. Generative AI models are designed to learn patterns from large datasets and use that knowledge to generate new content that is similar in style and structure.*

ChatGPT is just one example of generative AI, and is one of four broad-category types of AI known as "limited memory" AI. Limited memory AI is distinct from "reactive" AI, which is unable to build memory or store information for future, it can only respond to the current input.

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Large language models (LLMs) use deep learning algorithms to process large amounts of text. They are designed to understand the structure of natural language and to pick out meanings and relationships between words. These models are capable of understanding context, identifying and extracting information from text, and making predictions about a text’s content. They are trained on extremely large datasets. Chatbots, like ChatGPT, version GPT-3.5, was trained on a 45 terabyte dataset which is equivalent to over 292 million pages of documents, or 499 billion words.

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A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, often through text-based interfaces like messaging apps, websites, or voice assistants. Chatbots are typically powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, allowing them to understand and respond to user prompts in a human-like way.* ChatGPT is an example of a chatbot.

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"Prompts" are what we input into chatbot AI, such as ChatGPT, to get it to provide a response or perform a task for us (output). Prompt engineering is the process of planning and refining our prompts to result in the outputs we are satisfied with. At a basic user level, this includes critical evaluation of the quality of the outputs we receive, in the context of the quality of prompts we input, and includes meta-reflective analysis of our own thinking process. This process has powerful teaching and learning potential.

"Prompt Engineer" is a job in itself and also a desirable skill within other jobs. Demand for prompt engineering skills is going to grow as generative AI continues to advance.

Sources

GPT are the abbreviated initials for "generative pre-trained transformer"

ChatGPT user prompt:: please explain generative pretrained transformer to someone who is not an AI expert

ChatGPT output:

"A Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) is a type of artificial intelligence that has been trained to generate text that looks like it was written by a human. The 'pretrained' part means that it has already learned a lot about how language works, so it can understand things like grammar and sentence structure.

The 'transformer' part refers to the way it processes language. It breaks down text into smaller parts, called "tokens," and then looks at how those tokens are related to each other to understand the meaning of the text.

The 'generative' part means that it can use that understanding to create new text on its own. So, if you give it a prompt like 'write a story about a magical castle,' it can come up with a whole story all by itself, using the knowledge it has learned about language.

It's like having a really advanced robot assistant that can help you write things, but instead of just following your commands, it can actually come up with its own ideas and write them down for you."

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One of the reasons that we chose to let ChatGPT describe GPT is that I can control the level of complexity through the criteria of my prompt. On many sites that include information about what GPT is and a bit about how it works ("a bit" because for ChatGPT this is proprietary information in the details), the level of complexity is too steep for many people, like me, who do not already have a background in in AI. I could also ask the chatbot to describe it to a 12 year old or a 5 year old, or more nuanced, such as "for a college freshman just starting their AI degree"!

The other reason is to demonstrate the value of AI as a study aid. This can empower students to generate information about a complex concept on their own terms, as a way to scaffold their own learning and understanding. (Note, sometimes outputs are factually wrong, but for well-established concepts, such as GPT, outputs are more likely to be consistently factually reliable as long as the user knows enough about the concept to compose a valid prompt.)