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Exercise - Advanced Tasks - Learners

Using AI tools to learn used to be treated with suspicion - there were worries about plagiarism. Recently however, that view has changed since AI tools make effective teachers and coaches. Here are some example prompts and tasks to get you started.

Ask the AI tool to explain a topic

The classic way to learn about a topic of interest is to interrogate the AI. For example here are a series of prompts to understand the concept of a REIT.

What is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)?

But we can do better than that. We can follow on with some more detailed questions. For example:

Why are REITs set up and why do people invest in REIT?

Can you use an analogy to explain what a REIT is?

How would you explain a REIT to a 10 year old?

Can you provide some real examples of REITs?

Ask the AI tool to act in a role, for example a Socratic tutor

Use this prompt as the starter for a new conversation. This uses an example topic of a REIT - feel free to replace this topic with something more relevant to you. Hopefully, the AI tool will ask you an initial question. You then answer and the tool will then ask follow-on questions based on its assessment of your understanding to help you explore and master a topic.

Act as a Socratic tutor to help me learn and understand the concept of a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Ask me questions to check and guide my understanding.

Use a specialised AI tutor

AI tutors are general purpose AI tools that have been customised to act like a tutor. One good example is Khanmigo. This is subscription-based so we won’t use it in the course. However, there is a custom GPT, Khanmigo Lite, which is free. In ChatGPT, go to Explore GPTs, then search or Tutor me by Kahn Academy and try it out.

Use an AI tool to test your own understand of an article or document that you have read

Firstly, write down your own brief summary of the article. Then ask the AI tool to read the article and summarise it. What are the differences between your summary and the AI’s summary? Did you miss anything important? Which summary is better? And if so, why?

You may also want to follow up further with prompts such as

List the key terms in the article.

Group these terms into three of four categories

Here is my summary. Suggest how it could be improved. (Don’t forget to attach or copy/paste your summary into the prompt window.)

Read and comment on some articles that suggest how to use AI tools for education

Have a look at some of the references below that advise how to use AI for effective learning. Do they provide any helpful ideas or approaches for using AI to learn? What are your opinions on the suggestions and advice provided?

Here are some articles that advise on the use of AI to help effective learning.

• advice from Oxford University on the use of generative AI tools to support learning here
• an article with useful ideas how to use an AI tool in different educational roles (as coach, mentor, tutor etc) here
• a framework for prompt engineering, named CLEAR, here
• paper from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania on “Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts” cover page here and direct download of PDF here.

Here is a great YouTube video on the topic from Giles McMullen - “Oxford Researchers Discovered How to Use AI To Learn Like A Genius” here