Using GenAI as a Teacher (2/2)

18

October

2023

ChatGPT is a good writer. It is a better teacher!

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In part one of this series (find it here) I have already outlined why it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT as a teacher. But how can you use ChatGPT to aid you in learning? It’s all about packaging your individual needs into prompts. So, think first about how you can learn best. As for me, I like to get bullet point lists and definitions. Here are a few examples of my favorite prompts:

If you’re completely new to a subject:

  • Imagine you are “expert in the field”. Explain “topic” to me on “high school/university/expert” level. Use bullet points.
    • Imagine you are John McAffee. Explain cybersecurity to me on high school level. Use bullet points.

If you are already familiar but lack clarity on how different things connect:

  • In “field you are learning”, explain “level of detail” of “topic you learn” via “keywords you know should be in the explanation”.
    • In software engineering, explain the basics of agile development to me via sprints, scrum, and scope. Use bullet points.

If you have similar but different words but cannot find a good explanation anywhere:

  • In “field you are learning”, what is the difference between “X, Y and Z”?
    • In statistics, what is the difference between errors, residuals, and variance?

ChatGPT is also good for reading. Imagine you have a long text to read and cannot get a glimpse on what it’s about. You can copy/paste the text into ChatGPT and tell it the following prompt:

  • Summarize the key points of the given text in ten bullet points.

Let’s say ChatGPT gives you six distinct bullet points but four are kind of vague or around the same subject. Then you repeat the prompt but make it six bullet points. If the result is six concise bullet points, you get the idea of the text. Finally, you should still read the whole text with this understanding in mind (you will likely still find valuable new information in the text).

There you have it! Now you can use ChatGPT as your personal teacher. I hope you learned something and wish you great success!

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Using GenAI as a Teacher (1/2)

18

October

2023

ChatGPT is a good writer. It is a better teacher!

No ratings yet.

It is a common theme that students use generative AI, most prominently ChatGPT, as a short-cut to generate content for written assignments. While this straight-forward application of the given resources to “get done as soon as possible” may be useful in the short-term, of course it’s no way to actually learn something in the end (aside from also conducting plagiarism). In the long-term, digital dementia is looming, which is a phenomenon that describes people who became more forgetful because they could google what they need anytime. Now with GenAI, the ability to create original thought and overall creativity are in peril, too. Imagine where we would end up if we outsourced all our creative work and thinking processes to AI for just two years.

So, why don’t we take a step back and use ChatGPT’s ability to explain any topic exactly in the way that we need it to, to our personal advantage? It may be a great writer, but it’s a better teacher. I have been using ChatGPT in this way for a while now and I can tell you: Using ChatGPT as a teacher, rather than a substitute, elevates our own understanding and enables us to learn better, leading to added value both for ourselves and our assignments or jobs. It can increase our understanding before we write any assignment ourselves(!), with our own knowledge. This way, we can also use ChatGPT to understand and learn any topic!

There are multiple ways to use ChatGPT as a teacher and overall learning aid. The most obvious one is having it summarize a long text that you have to read or having it explain a concept to you. In any case, specific prompts will help. Both of these use cases will be discussed further in part 2 of this blog series (find it here).

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Want to stay relevant for your employer? Read this guide!

20

September

2017

No ratings yet. Once you stop learning you start dying - Albert Einstein

What if I told you that you will do a job in 10 years that does not even exist today?
What if I told you that you can start learning how to build exactly this self-flying (Yes, you read correctly!) car from your company from next year onwards via online MOOCs?
What if I told you that you cannot fully rely on your education received by the old institutions of university and high school for your work life?
And what if I told you that there is a high chance that you will do a job that does not even exist yet?

Yesterday, Udacity, a major player in the online education industry announced that they will be the first ones offering a Self-Flying car Nanodegree. To put some weight to that claim,  they have hired experts ranging from Nicholas Roy, from MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Angela Schoellig from the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies and Raff D’Andrea, co-founder of Kiva Systems, which Amazon bought in 2012.

Nowadays, we live in times in which we enjoy the greatest extent of flexibility regarding our education that has ever existed.
This, on the one hand, provides us with great freedom. For the first time in history people can have á la carte education: You like business a bit and technology a bit and you want to be a bit more technologically educated in blockchain or self flying cars? No, Problem, enroll in a MOOC and learn about it.

You rather like startups, but you do not know where to start?
No, Problem, search online and you will find more than enough resources of even high academic quality to get you started ranging from MOOC’s from the most elite universities (edx.org represented and cofounded by Harvard University) to elite venture capitalists (https://www.startupschool.org/ , created and represented by Y-Combinator).

You actually realized that you do not like business and would like to transition to Biology?
No, Problem, enroll in a micromaster course in bioinformatics (“https://www.edx.org/micromasters/bioinformatics)  to receive a micro master degree for a fraction of the cost of the actual university from a prestigious university?
Well you understand the point…

On the other hand, due to this freedom a major part of the responsibility for our education was shifted from the universities and institutions educating us back to ourselves. Employees are increasingly expected to never stop learning and hybrid qualifications are increasingly sought after according to a research by Burning Glass Technologies in Boston.(http://burning-glass.com/research/hybrid-jobs/)
Hybrid educations are no part of the traditional university system and are just a small part of an even more dramatic change.
Companies require for instance, more and more technical skills such as programming skills for even business graduates that were simply not covered in traditional business university programs and as it as new development, universities are on average too slow to react.
In other words, nobody will force you to learn more than what is required at university, not your professor and certainly not your parents as their generation followed a rather stringent career path of university education and almost guaranteed employment, but you are expected to do that simply because of workforce competition.

In short, with this new shift in responsibility not only the individual educational freedom increases dramatically, but also the competitive pressure increases.
This pressure in turn leads the individual to make use of that freedom and foster lifelong education to stay competitive.

Will you increase your chances and learn something new online or are you already set up with a job?
Do you rather embrace the new educational freedom or do you favor the times when universities have shown you the path to follow?

References

edX. (2017). Bioinformatics. [online] Available at: https://www.edx.org/micromasters/bioinformatics [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

edX. (2017). edX. [online] Available at: http://www.edx.org [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

GENERAL ASSEMBLY & BURNING GLASS TECHNOLOGIES (2015). Blurring Lines. [online] Boston. Available at: http://burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/Blurring_Lines_Hybrid_Jobs_Report.pdf [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

Roy, N. (2017). Building The Future of Smart Transportation with Flying Cars | Udacity. [online] Udacity.com. Available at: https://blog.udacity.com/2017/09/building-the-future-of-smart-transportation.html [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

Startupschool.com. (2017). Startup School. [online] Available at: http://startupschool.com [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

The Economist (2017). Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21714169-technological-change-demands-stronger-and-more-continuous-connections-between-education [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].

 

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