As an instructor, you have a lot on your plate. You have to prepare lessons, create assignments, answer emails, write instructions, and the list goes on. But what if you could get some help? That is where ChatGPT comes in. ChatGPT is able to create quick lesson outlines, generate materials, and even draft emails.
Creating Lessons
Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. ChatGPT can kickstart the process by creating a general outline that you can then tailor to your subject and students. When asking ChatGPT to create an outline or lesson plan, it helps to be specific in what you are looking for. You will want to add important information like learning objectives, age/grade/proficiency level of students, classroom size, teaching time, and any topics that need to be covered. This is not an exhaustive list, but if you start here and then refine the output, you should find a great place to start.
Teaching from a ChatGPT-Generated Lesson
Jason Lodge, a deputy associate dean at the University of Queensland, conducted an interesting informal experiment. He, along with his colleagues, created a lesson plan for a postgraduate initial teacher education course on lesson planning. The entire article is very informative, but here I will just summarize some of the more interesting points.
First, Lodge asked ChatGPT to create a lesson. In the initial prompt he was very specific, but it still took him a few tries to refine the prompt and get a response that was useable. As Lodge and his colleagues prepared to teach the lesson, they found it very rigid and structured. The plan also did not properly estimate the time that certain activities would take. Interestingly, many of the mistakes in the AI-generated lesson plan were similar to those made by first-time lesson planners.
When it came to teaching the lesson, Lodge and his colleagues found the experience uncomfortable. The lesson plan was not the way they were accustomed to teaching and they had less confidence in the plan itself. They found themselves calling upon their teaching toolkit (acquired through experienced teaching) to make a less-than-ideal lesson into something effective.
Ultimately, Lodge found that the lesson plan was very generic and formulaic, which makes sense for a program that simply has a database of teaching skills and information instead of experience. It also lacked the personal touches needed to tailor a learning experience to a specific audience.
Stephen Lockyer, a primary school teacher in west London, compared this process to a recipe. “Your lesson plans are your recipe—you still need a chef. You still need a teacher to make that recipe come alive,” he said. “If you’ve got a plan that’s bare bones that you can build on and flesh out and make wonderful, then that’ll save so much time”(Will). So take the time to make the ChatGPT-generated lesson your own. You know more about your students and how to teach them than AI.
Preparing Lesson Materials
One of the most time-consuming parts of putting a lesson together is creating the materials. This can include case studies, writing or discussion prompts, FAQs, and assignments. ChatGPT can help! Braxton Thornley, a language arts teacher and digital teaching and learning instructional coach at a Utah high school, used ChatGPT to help him plan a lesson about analyzing tone in written documents. He had ChatGPT write 10 separate paragraphs on the same topic, each with a different tone. What could have taken an hour was accomplished in minutes.
The same goes for other materials. Just write a prompt describing what you need, and ChatGPT can take care of the rest. This significantly cuts down on the amount of time instructors need to spend on creating unique questions, stories, prompts, and so forth. Just make sure to double-check that the information is accurate and meets the needs of your students.
Streamlining General Tasks
Perhaps one of the greatest uses instructors can find for AI is the streamlining of general and administrative tasks. ChatGPT is capable of drafting welcome to the class emails, announcements, and instructions. These tasks aren’t necessarily difficult, but they can take up a lot of time. Maybe you can’t find the right words to respond to a parent or student. Tell ChatGPT what you need to say and describe the tone it should have. Then you can edit it to be more specific to the situation.
A Word of Caution
As always, remember that ChatGPT and other AI tools are just that—tools. AI can provide incorrect and biased information. It also doesn’t have the personal touch of a real human teacher. So use ChatGPT to create to your heart’s content, but make sure you read it before you go ahead and use it.
Sources
ChatGPT generated a lesson plan for us and we taught it. Here’s what we learned. | LinkedIn. (2023, April 19). https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chatgpt-generated-lesson-plan-us-we-taught-heres-what-jason-m-lodge/
Will, M. (2023, March 1). With ChatGPT, Teachers Can Plan Lessons, Write Emails, and More. What’s the Catch? Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/technology/with-chatgpt-teachers-can-plan-lessons-write-emails-and-more-whats-the-catch/2023/01
