ChatGPT Prompt Writing Resources

Access ChatGPT free and try these for yourself.  Currently (30 May 2023) the free version of ChatGPT is at version 3.5 ‘turbo’.  With a little more work, you can also use chatbotui.com to tweak the output to your needs.

LDTI have sourced this list of prompts that you can use in your teaching.

Have your own prompts to share? Add them to the list.

Lesson Plan

Prompt: “Develop a two-hour tutorial lesson plan introducing [topic]. Include active learning opportunities.”

Output:  Produces a lesson plan that you can tweak to suit your needs. GPT-3.5 turbo (May 2023) produced (follow the link to see the full output):

  • Concise introduction including relevant topic headings (10 mins)
  • Small group discussion (30 mins)
  • Role-play with compelling scenarios (40 mins)
  • Written self-reflection piece (20 mins)
  • Application and follow up action planning (25 mins)
  • Wrap up (10 mins)

Regenerating a response will often improve ChatGPT’s output, for example, doing so with the above example included more detail around the resources to be provided to participants, such as guiding questions.  You can also further refine the tool’s output by asking it for additional detail.

Formative Multiple-Choice Questions

An example prompt to develop formative multiple-choice questions:

“You are an expert learning sciences instructor. Make 3 multiple choice questions that test first year university students’ comprehension of:

  • Interleaving
  • Chunking
  • Cognitive Overload
  • Distributed practice

For each question, write feedback to students about the correct and incorrect options. Link the topics together in your feedback to help students understand the relationships between the topics. Provide no more than three options. Use realistic distractors.”  

Use these as Canvas or contextually embedded H5P quizzes that reinforce information with feedback.  You could also use these as PollEverywhere questions in live presentations.  Note that the example uses related topics in study approaches, which means the question feedback can refer to the concepts in other questions.  This assists with reinforcing the broader concept of, in this case, cognitive overload in relation to the specific approaches to study listed in the other options. Crafting your prompts in this way will make for a more meaningful and useful response.

Basing the questions on a video transcript  
You can provide a video transcript (Panopto can generate this for you), then ask ChatGPT to generate a series of multiple-choice questions to assess the students’ engagement with the video and understanding of the content.

Output Options  
Need the output in a specific format, such as CSV or Markdown? You can provide a prompt in plain language with your requirements and ChatGPT will generate it for you. e.g., “Give me that output in CSV format.”

Creative Analogies for Complex Problems

Prompt: “You are an expert tutor in university-level exercise physiology.

Come up with 3 creative analogies to explain the interplay between energy systems and cardiovascular responses to exercise, using analogies drawn from contemporary popular culture.” Source: Liu, 2023

Reflective Questions for Student Placement

Prompt: “Write me a set of questions that [year level] year [discipline] students can use to reflect on their placement experience.”

Perspectives generator

Prompt: “Give 5 different examples on the Great Resignation from senior managers who have very different cultural backgrounds. Write these in the form of short interview quotes from the perspective of these managers.

…

Explain why these perspectives stem from their cultural backgrounds.”

Source: Liu, 2023

Topic suggestions for student discussion

Prompt: “Create a list of discussion questions for [first year, second year..] level university students on [topic].”

Examples of theoretical processes/ideas

Prompt: “Act as an expert in the learning sciences. I am teaching a class about confirmation bias and schemata in classroom learning. Create 3 examples where confirmation bias occurs and explain how this relates to schemata in the psychology of learning. Write these as short stories set in school classrooms.”

Prompt: “Act as an expert in building fire safety. I am teaching a class about the different types of fire safety features of buildings in Australia conforming to the NSW fire regulation standards. Create 5 creative and engaging example stories highlighting the fire safety features of different types of buildings in different Australian locations and contexts. Provide a link to the page in the standards document where specific standards are covered in the text.”

Assessment Ideas Generator

This example uses chain of thought prompting.  Whilst the example in and of itself is not ground-breaking, it demonstrates a level of refinement to the “final” output.  This “final” output can be further refined, but as a point of interest, the example also documents some of the prompter’s thinking process in a similar way someone writing a draft or having a conversation with a colleague about assessment might do.

Prompt: “Given the following learning outcomes, come up with 3 creative active assessment ideas that could help students achieve the learning outcomes and allow me to assess students' achievement of those outcomes. For each assessment, explain what students might do in the process of completing the assessment that would help them develop skills and knowledge towards those learning outcomes. Each assessment should have a realistic context and realistic output, like what they would be expected to do in a [subject] context.”

…

Prompt: “Generate these again indicating in square brackets where each learning outcome is met in the assessment”

…

Prompt: “Refine these with instructions to the student and incorporate a list of possible projects they could choose from.”

…

Prompt: “Regenerate and add a new assessment as well, for a total of three assessments. Ensure the learning outcomes are scattered across the three assessments, making them authentic and achievable.”

…

Prompt: “Regenerate. Please ensure that the assessment references relevant sections of the PMBOK version 7 available at https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/the-pmbok-guide-seventh-edition-summary/ and links specific parts of the activities, quoting the PMBOK numbers. Provide more detailed instructions for students. Ensure the learning outcomes are scattered across the three assessments, making them authentic and achievable.”

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