Using Generative AI at Holland College: AI Prompting & Scale of use

Scale of AI Use 

Students need to know that there is a place for AI and this technology is in many of the tools we use daily! AI use is often put on a 1-5 scale to help students understand how much AI they could reasonably use for their assignments (but always ask your instructor before using AI!)

Leon Furze created an AI scale to help educators understand how AI can be used in their assignments. This scale can also be used by students! Read the full blog post here

Furze, L. (2022). The AI Assessment Scale: Version 2. Leon Furze Blog.  https://leonfurze.com/2023/12/18/the-ai-assessment-scale-version-2/comment-page-1/     

Furze, L. (2022). The AI Assessment Scale: Version 2. Leon Furze Blog.  https://leonfurze.com/2023/12/18/the-ai-assessment-scale-version-2/comment-page-1/  

Prompt Examples based on how much AI is used:

Hall & McKee suggest modelling prompts on the following formula:

[Engaging Context] + [Relevant Background Information] + [Clear Goals] + [Desired Response Format and Constraints] + [Specific Questions or Prompts]
 

Example 1:

[Background:] Act as a pharmacy student [Context:] who is interested in creating a promotional campaign about flu vaccinations in a community pharmacy. [Goal:] You hope to increase the rate of flu vaccinations by 15% and it should not require a lot of money to run the campaign. [Response Format & Constraint:] Provide 5 detailed examples of campaign ideas bearing in mind that the campaign duration is one month.

Example 2:

[Background:] I am an instructional designer [Context:] interested in creating a short course that shows business students how to find industry research, including competitors, TAM, SOM, and SAM. [Goal:] I am looking for a clear and concise storyboard demonstrating how I could scaffold my tutorial. [Response Format:] Provide a detailed list of business concepts paired with examples so that I can markup my online tutorial. [Constraint:] Limit your response to 5 scaffolded concepts and assume the tutorial will time out after 60 minutes. (Hall & McKee)

Some text on this page was adapted from How to Use Generative AI by Deakin University Library, which is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

When reviewing the responses from generative AI tools, be mindful of some limitations: 

• AI tools are limited by their knowledge base (e.g., the free version of ChatGPT includes data until January 2022).

• Responses are not replicable. It’s probabilistic, so you will not get the same answer twice.

• May generate false information (referred to as AI hallucination).

• May generate biased information based on their training data.

• References may be incorrect.

• Can be generic and lack true understanding of a subject area.

The video below describes how you can use generative AI at the start of a research project.