How to Use ChatGPT to Learn
A new paper on LLMs in the classroom that contains heuristics for their effective use.
Caleb Ontiveros
April 17, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
[image created with Midjourney]
Welcome to AutomatED: the newsletter on how to teach better with tech.
Each week, we share what we’ve have learned about AI and tech in the university classroom. What works, what doesn't, and why.
In this piece, Caleb Ontiveros applies tips from a recent paper on teaching economics with ChatGPT.
How do you Teach Students to Use AI Well?
That’s one question that economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok ask in their paper “How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, including GPT.” They note that, in a few months, this paper may be out of date. Maybe so, but it’s useful now, and I expect key lessons to remain.
In this piece, I’ll highlight their nine heuristics for using ChatGPT (or other LLMs) well.
I’ll illustrate each of their suggestions with examples from GPT-4. This should give you a good sense of how to use these tools yourself and what heuristics to impart to students.