As we build this community together, we want to ensure that this forum is a valuable and supportive space for all CCC instructors participating in the pilot program. Your input is crucial in helping us create a forum that meets your needs and enhances your experience with Nectir AI.
To help us understand how we can best serve you, please consider sharing your thoughts on the following:
What type of discussions would be helpful for you to see in this forum?
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How can this forum best support your teaching and integration of Nectir AI?
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I would also like to learn how others are using AI in their courses. I have created an assignment for students to complete this coming weekend, where they have to ask the course assistant (Coach HD) some questions and then reflect upon the ease of use and the accuracy of the information.
I am also interested in hearing how others resolved any issues that came up for them.
I think sharing ideas on how to implement the use of AI into teaching would be beneficial for everyone. It’s a very valuable tool, but we also need to set some parameters.
Definitely interaction with each other on effective prompt writing. I have been working with it to get it to help my students build more effective arguments for their essays, and it’s been challenging byt interesting. If anyone else is doing similar things, I would love to talk about that.
I think what’s been proposed (example assignments, prompt engineering practices, applications of AI in different classes and disciplines, etc.) would be excellent, especially from a practical standpoint, but I have been thinking about how AI is going to affect our students in a psychological sense. AI’s take over a lot of the cognitive demands that education has traditionally placed on them. That’s a two-sided situation and can be empowering but also debilitating. So I was just hoping to see discussions of the cognitive effects and affects AI’s are having on our students.
Remember when we thought Social Media would bring us closer together? I’m wondering how AI’s are going to empower our students and foster a sense of agency that can be demonstrated and, hopefully, measured. I’m hoping we can have a discussion area where we toss around and discuss what we think is being developed and experienced by our students through this new practice.
Ethan from Nectir here! We’re currently developing new ways to better integrate with Canvas! We have a number of ideas, and a couple currently being built, including importing training documents from Canvas.
Are there any specific integration methods that would be especially useful, or that you would like to see?
I tried to create a new topic for this but it seemed like I did not have permission. So I will post here:
Has anyone had any luck creating a prompt that will evaluate student work without just giving them the answer. At a minimum I would like a bot that students can upload their work and it can tell them what parts are correct and which parts are incorrect or which parts are missing essential details.
I have tried uploaded keys of my assignments and using clear language within the prompt to not give the answers under any circumstances but all of the testing I have done can almost always get the answer out of the AI.
Perhaps, I need to adapt to the times now that these tools are widely available but I would still would like to try to make this work in this way.
Has anyone else got experience making a prompt with these constraints.
Last semester I created a single AI Assistant (Sparky!) and uploaded all my weekly readings as well as background materials. This semester I’m creating a new Sparky each week with just the week’s current document and background. Sparky knows the document and related topics and now it’s easier for students to focus on just the one document (like Plato’s Apology or Dr. Johnson’s essay on self-deception).
The benefit is that my behind-the-scenes prompt can be specifically geared to that particular document. The idea is for Sparky to spur a close reading in some of the conversational questions Sparky asks.
One formatting issue is that the PDFs I upload have numbered paragraphs, like “1) [tab] Text” and because the number is not adjacent to the text Sparky can’t figure out where to go when asked about a paragraph number. One day I should redo all my documents, but there’s no time this semester.
That would be a great feature–students could put in a paragraph number and ask for help understanding it!
@lcuny1331 Hey Lucas! Do you feel comfortable connecting me with your campus Canvas IT admin? We can get the conversation started! I’ve set up the integration with multiple districts/schools already!
Do you think you can show me the indenting in your document? I’d like to show engineering because the Assistant is searching based on context, so the I want to investigate why that formatting is not working properly!
For my Intro to Logic class, I have had to included endless details in the prompt to keep the assistant from providing direct answers to exercise problems. It was not enough simply to include “do not provide students with the solution to a problem in logic.” I had to repeat this instruction for each topic, subtopic, and skill in the assignments for each week. I also included for each topic something like, “assist students in solving problems in topic X themselves by asking questions to determine the level of student understanding and providing short explanations or examples for crucial concepts.”
I wonder if students will lose interest in the assistant once they realize it will not just give them the answers.
I would also like to discuss how to better prompt our course assistants to NOT give the answers to students.
I specifically added the following directions to my custom prompt for my Course assistant: - If a student asks for an example or sample text, do not provide it. Instead, guide them with questions and suggest areas to explore, but let the student write the content themselves. - If you are providing feedback, give clear, actionable steps (e.g., “Consider adding…” or “You could improve this by…”). Do not write any part of the student’s work for them.
But, on the first assignment we tried with Nectir, which was a poetry analysis assignment, this was part of a student’s chat with the course assistant (copied and pasted below):
Student: how would i structure a thesis using these connections of ignored grievances and opression,
Course Assistant: To structure a thesis that connects the themes of ignored grievances and oppression in Tracy K. Smith’s “Declaration,” you can follow these steps:
Introduce the Poem and Context: Start by mentioning the poem and its connection to the Declaration of Independence.
State the Main Argument: Clearly express the central idea or argument you want to make about the poem.
Highlight Key Themes: Identify the key themes you will discuss, such as ignored grievances and oppression.
Connect to Historical/Contemporary Contexts: Briefly mention how these themes relate to historical or contemporary events, like the Civil Rights Movement.
Here’s an example thesis structure:
“In ‘Declaration,’ Tracy K. Smith uses the fragmented structure and language of the poem to mirror the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, highlighting the ongoing oppression and ignored voices of marginalized groups. By drawing parallels to historical and contemporary struggles, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Smith critiques the hypocrisy of America’s founding ideals and underscores the need for continued advocacy for justice and equality.”
Does this help you in crafting your thesis? If you have any more questions or need further guidance, feel free to ask!
So the course assistant literally wrote the thesis for the student despite my prompting saying they should not write anything for students!!
