Day 2: It’s all about prompts
Tuesday 30 April
Welcome to day 2 of 6 days of AI. Today’s task takes us a step further and gets you to become more familiar with the use of AI.
Of course, 10-20 minutes is not enough to fully explore its functionality in total, but it aims to get you more familiar and to think about its potential (and its limitations).
As highlighted in day 1, we strongly recommend Copilot as the preferred AI tool here at Sussex. We will look more at ‘Prompts’ today and how important they are.
‘It’s all about prompts… the key to using AI successfully’
Becoming skilled at prompt writing requires ongoing investigation and modification. Yet, it’s also highly valuable (and timesaving) to look at what others have found that already works well. This is a link to a powerful published AI prompt library by Wharton educators. It is worth investigating so that you might acquire an idea of the ways people are using prompts.
Your task for today
Your task is to try out at least one of the following prompts to ask Copilot (look at day 1 for how to access Copilot):
- Ask Copilot to write you a lesson plan, so for example, “I am a tutor on a business course working in a business school for undergraduates, create a lesson plan for an induction session for first year students on a BA course”. Maybe, adapt this prompt for a subject that you currently teaching. How useful was the Copilot response?
- Ask Copilot to create some mini case studies for you, so for example, “create 5 mini case studies of 200 words each for discussion on how group presentations can be used with finance students”. Again, you might want to adapt this prompt to create case studies related to topics that you teach or interested in. How could you use these case studies in your teaching?
- Ask Copilot to brainstorm some ideas for you, so for example, “Name the 5 most influential businessmen or women of the twentieth century”. There is no limit to what you can ask it, but its response needs to be looked at critically. Were there any biases in responses to your prompts?
- Ask Copilot to create some quiz questions, so for example, “Create 5 multiple choice questions based on the topic ‘contemporary issues in UK politics.’. Include 4 options for each question and include the answers”. You might want to see how Copilot responds to the prompt when you ask it to create similar questions in the topics you are interested in. How did it respond? Could you actually use the questions it generated?
Give your feedback
Please feel free to give your feedback and answer the questions below using the 6 days of AI Padlet. There may be other issues or questions that you might want to explore. The aim of the discussion area is to get a variety of different opinions about AI. Many of our views about AI are still evolving and might change as we try out these new tools – you might just want to use this discussion area to test out some of your thoughts.
- How did you get on with the task? – did you find it useful?
- Did you notice any biases in its responses?
- Could you see any inaccuracies or limitations in the responses you got?
- Were there any surprises?
- Did it give you any other ideas how you could use Copilot in your teaching? If so, how else could you use it?
Please note: This course is designed to provide an introduction to the more popular AI tools. However, unless explicitly stated, the AI tools discussed are not supported or endorsed by the University of Sussex. All are free to use but may require users to provide personal information (e.g. name and email) to access.
Please DO NOT upload your own or others' personal or private data, INCLUDING STUDENT WORK, to any such unsupported tools. Doing so could be breach data protection regulations.