📝 Sign Up for Our Oct. 4th
“How to Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor” Webinar

Webinar Description and Sign-Up Link

The last AutomatED webinar, which occurred on September 6th and covered how to train your students to use AI, had 24 registrants from SUNY Fredonia to UNC-Chapel Hill and Butte-Glenn Community College.

100% of responding participants gave it an A (“Excellent!”) afterwards.

Here’s how one participant described it:

Another simply said “more please.”

Wish granted!

If you want to get better at using AI for…

• lesson planning

• creating course content (e.g. quizzes from lecture recordings),

• grading and assessment

• research tasks (e.g. drafting grant applications or reviewing literature)

• administrative tasks

• field-specific tasks

And if you want to walk out of the webinar with concrete prompts and guidance on how to do so…

Then the next AutomatED webinar — titled “How to Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor” — is perfect for you.

Check out the detailed webinar schedule below.

I will cover how to use large language models (LLMs) to complete a range of professorial tasks like those listed above, including effective ways to prompt (including long context), deploy custom GPTs, and use retrieval augmented generation (RAG).

I will touch on ChatGPT (including 4o and the new o1), Claude, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and Gemini for Google Workspace.

I will share some of the secret sauce behind the 10 ways I use LLMs as a professor.

And I will show you how to better integrate these LLMs in your workflow, so they fit neatly into how you operate on a day-to-day basis.

The webinar will occur on Friday, October 4th from 12pm to 1:30pm Eastern Daylight Time.

The price is $150, but if you register from September 29th until the start of the webinar, you can get a 50% refund if you give a testimonial within a week of the completion of the webinar.

And ✨Premium subscribers get 60% off until 11am of the day of the webinar, which they can apply via the link immediately below:

But there is a catch…

Actually, there are four three:

1. If there are not 20 pre-orders by Saturday, September 28th, all pre-orders will be refunded in full and the webinar will be cancelled.

2. All purchases — pre-order or not — come with a 30-day money back guarantee. If you are not completely satisfied, I will refund you in full.

3. Registrants get the full video recording, AI-generated summary, and slides, as well as several other high-value items noted below (including two free ✨Premium pieces on prompting). Last time, many registrants could not make the synchronous Zoom but nonetheless found it immensely valuable.

4. I am capping the webinar at 50 attendees.

Reserve your spot now!

I will be the host, as was the case for our last webinar on how to train your students to use AI (and the prior one on custom GPTs).

Webinar Schedule

Pre-Webinar Activity: Identifying Your LLM Use Case

Objective: Participants will identify a specific LLM use case relevant to their work that they've struggled with or wish to improve.

Activity Description: Prior to the webinar, attendees will:

1. Reflect on their current use of LLMs in their professional tasks.

2. Identify a specific task or challenge where they believe LLMs could be helpful but haven't had success yet. Options include but are not limited to:

   • lesson planning

   • creating course content

   • grading and assessment

   • research tasks

   • administrative tasks

   • field-specific tasks

3. Briefly describe their ideal outcome for this use case.

Resources: A structured worksheet with background information will be provided to guide this reflection. It will be sent on Tuesday, October 1.

Part 1: Best Practices for Prompting LLMs
(15 minutes)

Objective: Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of effective prompting techniques for LLMs.

Content:

1. Overview of key prompting strategies:

   • Context setting

   • Step-by-step instructions

   • Use of exemplars and few-shot learning

   • Effective formatting of inputs

2. Techniques for refining and iterating prompts

3. Strategies for evaluating and improving LLM outputs

4. Examples of effective prompts across various academic tasks

Part 2: Leveraging Long Context in LLM Prompting
(15 minutes)

Objective: Participants will learn how to utilize the extended context capabilities of advanced LLMs for complex academic tasks.

Content:

1. Introduction to long context capabilities (e.g., Gemini 1.5 Pro's 2 million token limit)

2. Structured approach to long context prompting:

   • Preparing and organizing content

   • Building structured prompts with clear labeling

   • Utilizing few-shot examples in long context

   • Crafting detailed step-by-step queries

3. Strategies for maintaining coherence and relevance in long context interactions in extended prompt-response exchanges

4. Practical examples of long context prompting for academic tasks (e.g., literature reviews, grant writing)

Part 3: Setting Up and Using Custom AI Tools
(20 minutes)

Objective: Attendees will learn how to create and effectively use custom AI tools tailored to their specific needs.

Content:

1. Overview of custom AI tools:

   • Custom GPTs (OpenAI)

   • Claude Projects (Anthropic)

   • Gems (Google)

2. Comparative analysis of different custom AI tools

3. Crash course in creating custom GPTs:

   • Defining use cases and objectives

   • Crafting effective instructions

   • Integrating knowledge bases

   • Testing and refining

4. Best practices for integrating custom AI tools into academic workflows

Part 4: Workshop: Pair Work on LLM Use Cases
(30 minutes)

Objective: Participants will apply their learning to real-world use cases in a collaborative setting.

Activity Description:

1. Attendees will be paired in breakout rooms

2. Each pair will:

   • Share their pre-identified LLM use cases

   • Collaborate on developing effective prompts or custom GPT instructions for both use cases

   • Test and discuss their prompts/instructions

3. I will circulate among breakout rooms to provide guidance and answer questions

Part 5: Q&A Session
(10 minutes—and beyond, as needed)

Open forum for participants to ask questions, share insights, and discuss challenges encountered during the workshop.

Post-Webinar Resources:

1. The full video recording of the webinar, AI-generated summary, and PowerPoint slides

2. Two free ✨Premium pieces on advanced prompting techniques:

   • Tutorial: How to Build (Better) Custom GPTs

   • Tutorial: How to Draft Grant Applications with Gemini

3. Curated catalog of effective starter prompts for common professorial tasks (I use these myself!)