Quick Tip – AI Prompts for Teaching

Dr. Cynthia Alby developed the resource “Cut and Paste AI Prompts” for instructors. This comprehensive guide intends to provide instructors not only with prompts, but techniques to effectively experiment with various AI tools specific to various practices of teaching, such as  course design, assessment development, and lesson planning.  As Dr. Alby notes, “I have found that providing instructors with prompts they can cut and paste into AI made them more comfortable, more quickly with experimenting. I also discovered that when I can help someone experiment with AI for an hour or so, their anxiety levels tend to drop, and they begin to see it less like a threat and more like a tool.“

Using Video in Your Course

There are several ways that you can use videos in your course, regardless of modality:

  1. Introduce a class or unit: Create pre-lecture videos for students to watch prior to attending class. This provides students with an initial exposure to the content, sparks interest, and improves students’ understanding. The visuals in your video can help them connect with the material.

  2. Building background knowledge on a topic: We know that students learn best when they take in information via multiple modalities—through reading, listening to the instructor’s oral explanations, hands on activities and viewing visual media. Images and videos support the learning of new content, concepts, and ideas. (Adapted from Educause)

  3. Emphasize a Point with Video:Identify key learning goals or areas where students have difficulty understanding and create a short microlecture to support students. These can be used for flipped classroom application (with active learning, clickers, orTopHatin class to review and extend video content) or for independent student review. You can use video as a tool to enhance the class discussion and make whatever you’re teaching that much more accessible to your diverse body of learners. Keep these videos focused by only discussing the learning goal. Avoid adding fun facts or informati9n not directly related to the topic. Click here for resources related to creating microlectures.

  4. Demonstrate Examples: Instead of providing students with an answer key to a problem, create a video (with narration) working out the solution step-by-step. To encourage students to watch the video, work out only part of the problem in the video and have students complete the rest and submit it online as a no or low-stakes assignment or quiz (e.g. through Canvas). PlayPosit allows you to quickly integrate questions into your quizzes so you can get a sense of how well students understand the problems. It also allows students to receive immediate feedback. Click here for resources related to creating PlayPosit. Quick Check in Canvas also allows for quick inline low-stakes assessments in Canvas (Adapted from University of British Columbia)

     

  5. Interview with an Expert: Record interviews with experts in the discipline, providing examples and explaining concepts relevant to what is being covered in class. This enriches students’ learning by allowing them to hear what other experts have to say about a particular topic. (Adapted From University of British Columbia)

  6. Dispel misconceptions – A video that explicitly dispels common misconceptions about a topic can help students achieve conceptual change. This can be as simple as a video that starts with ‘you might think that… but you’d be wrong’. Simply presenting facts can reinforce students’ incorrect assumptions. Indeed, deliberately using a video that presents incorrect information then discussing these mistakes can also be an effective way of handling student misconceptions at the start of a unit. (from Monash University)

  7. Make video part of a larger homework assignment. Faizan Zubair and Mary Keithly are each part of the BOLD Fellows program at Vanderbilt University, in which graduate students develop online learning materials for incorporation into a faculty mentor’s course. Faizan developed videos on that were embedded in a larger homework assignment in Paul Laibinis’ Chemical Engineering class and found that students valued the videos and that the videos improved students’ understanding of difficult concepts when compared to a semester when the videos were not used in conjunction with the homework. Mary worked with Kathy Friedman to develop videos and follow-up questions to serve as pre-class preparation in a genetics class. Although there was no apparent change to learning outcomes in the class, students valued the videos and post-video questions as learning tools and thought that they were effective for promoting student understanding.(from Vanderbilt University)

Getting to Know Your Students

Jennie Carr, an Associate Professor at Bridgewater College, explains that researchers have found “strong positive correlations between [faculty] building relationships and rapport with students and academic achievement, attendance, student interest, motivation, empowerment, self-efficacy student attention, classroom behaviors and interactions (Benson, Cohen, Buskist, 2005, Houser & Frymier, 2009, Kozanitis, Desbiens, Chouinard, 2007; Myers, Goldman, Atkinson, Ball, Carton, Tindage & Anderson, 2016)”. Some ways you can develop connections with students in the first few weeks of class are listed below. Some techniques work better for smaller (n<60) classrooms while others work well with all class sizes. As the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon notes: “Even in large lecture classes, it is possible to get to know a conspicuous number of your students, a few at a time. For students, it’s the effort that counts”. Some of these tips I have shared before, however, I have added some new insights and additional information that may be helpful (hopefully).

Learning Student Names:

Name Coach: https://cloud.name-coach.com/ – Assign students the task of recording their name and writing the phonetic pronunciation of their name. Name Coach slows down the recording to help you hear how they pronounce their names. This will help you to listen to their names and learn how to pronounce their names correctly. Use Name Tents – If seating allows space for students to have name tents, ask students to write their names in large letters on both sides of a folded 5 x 8 index card and to keep this card on their desks/tables for the first few classes. The Canvas Roster: https://academiccontinuity.yale.edu/faculty/how-guides/canvas/canvas-class-roster is available in the People menu of the Canvas course to all Canvas roles except Observer, displays the name, email address, role, photo, and NameCoach recording (if available) for each member of the course. Using the Photo Roster tool, you can change the page or print layout; search and filter the list of course members; group by role, section, or group; and print or export the current view. Official IU photos and associated features are only available to instructors in SIS courses. The roster has a feature that allows you to print out an attendance sheet. You can use that sheet to make annotations that will help you remember your students’ names. The Eberly Center suggests taking a few extra seconds for each student to identify their most 1-2 noticeable traits. Be sure to include ways of pronouncing names that are unfamiliar to you.

Introduce Yourself

Consider sharing information with students beyond your name and the name of the course you’re teaching. Vanderbilt University suggests one of the following:

  • Personal biography: your place of birth, family history, educational history, hobbies, sport and recreational interests, how long you have been at the university, and what your plans are for the future.

  • Educational biography: how you came to specialize in your chosen field, a description of your specific area of expertise, your current projects, and your future plans.

  • Teaching biography: how long have you taught, how many subjects/classes have you taught, what level of class you normally teach, what you enjoy about being in the classroom, what do you learn from your students, and what you expect to teach in the future.

Have a seating plan

When students arrive in your class, let them sit where they want, and then ask them to remain in those seats for at least two weeks. Create a seating chart for the room and have students fill in their names on the seating chart. Refer to the chart as you conduct the course. This reference will allow you to learn names according to placement in the classroom. (University of Lethbridge)

Icebreakers: The Center for Teaching and Learning at IU-Indy https://ctl.iupui.edu/Resources/Preparing-to-Teach/Using-Ice-Breakers reminds us to use icebreakers as a way of getting acquainted with students and establish classroom community on the first day of class. However, you can use small icebreakers beyond the first few weeks of class to help build rapport. Top Hat https://app.teaching.iu.edu/tools/top-hat provides a list of icebreakers that can be used in various contexts, including course- or assignment-specific icebreakers https://tophat.com/blog/classroom-icebreakers/

Having One on One or Small Group Meetings/Office Hours – Carr (2020) recommends setting up 1:1 or small group appointments to meet with students during the first few weeks of class. “Meaningful interactions with students outside of classes is listed by the National Survey of Student Engagement as a high-impact educational practice (NSSE, 2017). Approximately 95% of my students attend. During the 1:1 meet and greet meeting, my primary goal is to get to know the students on a personal level. I explain to them very simply, “I care about you first and foremost as a person – I want you to be successful in this class.” The meeting encourages students to not only find my office but also helps reduce anxious feelings about meeting with faculty when they have a more serious concern”The Canvas Scheduler Tool https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-a-Scheduler-appointment-group-in-a-course-calendar/ta-p/1021 allows you to create a block of time where a student or groups of students can meet with you. Students can sign up for appointment times in their own calendars. Have students say their name when asking for a response to a question during your lecture or discussion, or when they ask a question. Explain to them that this helps not only you, but their classmates learn their names.

In addition to office hours – When possible, arrive to class a little early and stay a little later to chat with students. This will also allow students who may not feel comfortable raising questions during class to approach you in a low-pressure way.

Asking students to complete confidential student profiles – Another way to get to know your students is to have them complete a student profile (you can use Google Tools, Microsoft 360, or Qualtrics to create a profile: https://forms.gle/P2upb3JKzhSnzBRE8). Profiles are a form with questions that allow you to better understand who your students are, what they know about the class/discipline, as well as the types of expectations they have for the course.  It also allows you to understand what types of boundaries they have in terms of work and family that may impact how they perform in your course.