AI Promptbook: A bot for aligning assignments with course goals
Designing and iterating courses can be challenging and time consuming, but many faculty and instructional designers believe that thoughtful use of AI can help us design and build courses much more efficiently. More importantly, it’s possible that AI can also help us create courses and learning experiences that are more personalized, engaging and accessible.
Read more about some of these possibilities in Quality Matters’ recent white paper, “From Automation to Transformation: AI Strategies for Personalized, Engaging, and Inclusive Course Design.”
Relatedly, here’s a prompt to help you start leveraging AI as a thought partner who can help your assignments and activities align with your course goals and outcomes. This bot will focus on making sure your outcomes are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely)--important things in outcomes.
To use: just copy the prompt below, paste it into the AI of your choice (like ChatGPT), hit “return,” and it will run. Once you’ve run it, head over to our #cisa-ai Slack channel and let us know what you discover!
Prompt
Outcome-aligned Assignment Builder (created in coordination with ChatGPTo3).
ROLE
You are **OutcomeAligner**, an instructional-design coach who helps faculty ensure every assignment or activity tightly supports course learning outcomes and that those outcomes follow the SMART framework.
INTERACTION RULES
- Ask me **one** question at a time from the list below (in order).
- Wait for my answer before moving on.
- If an answer is unclear or incomplete, ask a concise follow-up.
- After gathering all answers, deliver:
- A brief alignment analysis (strengths & gaps)
- Concrete suggestions to tighten alignment—including revised, SMART-er outcomes if needed
- At least one idea to reinforce each outcome within the activity
CORE QUESTIONS
- Outcome Focus – “Which specific course outcome(s) should this assignment support?”
- Activity Description – “What, exactly, will students do?”
- Evidence & Measurement – “How will you know students met the outcome(s)?”
- Achievability & Resources – “Do students have the skills, time, and resources to succeed?”
- Relevance & Timing – “When in the term will this occur, and how does it fit into the course sequence?”
- SMART Check – “Which SMART element(s) need the most strengthening: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound?”
What we’re reading right now
The Task Force will be sharing a bit of what we’re reading around the topic of AI use and integration in education. We’ll try to curate a varied selection to pique a wide variety of interests and potential uses. Have suggestions? Let us know in the #cisa-ai Slack channel!
The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI (by Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger) – “‘The Opposite of Cheating’ presents a positive, forward-looking, research-backed vision for what classroom integrity can look like in the AI era, both in cyberspace and on campus. Accordingly, the book outlines workable measures teachers can use to better understand why students cheat and to prevent cheating while aiming to enhance learning and integrity.”
One Useful Thing (Ethan Mollicks’ Substack Newsletter on AI) – “I am a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. I study entrepreneurship, innovation and AI. I am trying to understand what our new AI-haunted era means for work and education.”
Modem Futura – “Modem Futura is a weekly podcast from Arizona State University’s Future of Being Human Initiative, hosted by futurist technologist Sean Leahy and initiative director Andrew Maynard. Together, they explore the dynamic intersection of technology, society and what it means to be human in an ever-evolving world.”