This ChatGPT lesson plan is designed to help educators creatively use artificial intelligence to maximize teaching and learning experiences
ChatGPT is all the rage these days, proliferating education landscapes, conferences, books, and journals. Unfortunately, much of the discussion regarding ChatGPT has surrounded the dangers of using AI in schools due to potential academic integrity and cheating issues as well as privacy and ethical concerns. While all of these are important to be cognizant of and should absolutely be points of further consideration for new policies and pedagogy, there is an opportunity to leverage ChatGPT and similar generative AI platforms in ways that benefit students and teachers.
For an overview of ChatGPT, check out What is ChatGPT and How Can You Teach With It?
What is presented here is just one idea on how to incorporate ChatGPT into a lesson, but there are countless ways to do so.
Topics: Any
Grade Band: Middle School and High School
Learning Objective:
At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
- Develop a robust team presentation
- Collaboratively present using any creative medium
AI and ChatGPT Review
While students may have heard of ChatGPT, they might not know the specific science around it. Because of this, start the lesson with a slide presentation using a tool such as Slido, explaining what generative AI is, how it is used in everyday life, some of the ethical and privacy concerns, and the benefits of it. Then, introduce students to the ChatGPT platform and show how it works, and guide them through creating prompts to get the best results.
By using Slido, you can incorporate interactive check-in polling throughout the lesson to make sure that students are following along and to add an engagement aspect.
Student Topic Selection and ChatGPT Interaction
Once students have gained an understanding of generative AI and ChatGPT, they can be placed in teams. You can have each team choose a topic based on what you are currently teaching them.
For example, if you are in a social studies or history course, students can choose a topic related to government or economics. Or if you are teaching English language arts, students might select literature or public speaking.
Once teams have decided their topics, they can start to outline their presentation subtopics. With the assistance of ChatGPT, students can ask:
- Questions of clarification (What is meant by the 7 wonders of the world?)
- For examples (What is an example of a renaissance literary work?)
- To hear alternatives (How can individuals save money beyond a traditional bank account?)
In this case, ChatGPT is not doing the work for students, but enhancing the experience, encouraging critical thinking by forcing them to ask certain questions, and serving as a support system to the teacher who may not have the time or capacity to work directly with each group.
Presentations
Since you are allowing students to creatively present using the medium of their choice, the end products may vary widely. If you want to suggest specific technology tools for students to choose from for their presentations, PowToon, VoiceThread, and WeVideo are appropriate options.
What if Students Cheat?
A well-planned lesson that positions the use of ChatGPT in specific ways can help ameliorate potential cheating. Remember, in this lesson, ChatGPT is being used to support idea generation and critical thinking. The students will still need to develop the final product using their own knowledge and words. For this lesson, it may be helpful to create a grading rubric as well with measures included that would make it difficult for students to use ChatGPT for the final product.
This article and discussion on cheating within online courses may be helpful to review for additional ideas as well.
From this sample lesson plan, you can see how ChatGPT can be used in schools to support teaching and learning. Instead of banning something that students will inevitably access, guide their use of the technology purposefully, leveraging the benefits of ChatGPT. Many of us already use AI in our daily lives, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. Now, we can offer students the opportunity to use similar technology tools while they learn new content, making lessons more exciting and engaging.
