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ChatGPT in the Classroom: Enhancing

Teaching Strategies with Artificial

Intelligence Assistance

By Sheryl Hinman

The author reviews a popular Artificial Intelligence (AI) app, ChatGPT, with particular emphasis on
its potential as a tool for educators. Examples of use by the instructor and students in an educational
methods course provide details and insight to her overview.

ducators looking for instructional ideas can be daunted by the sheer number
Eof websites listed after typing a phrase into search engines such as Google.
For instance, my search asking for a lesson plan on dialogue writing resulted in
a collection of 43 million links. Scrolling down such a lengthy list can be a time-
consuming and frequently discouraging process.
Knowing the challenges that face teachers searching for useful strategies led
me to explore options for assistance from artificial intelligence (AI). Todd Finley’s
Edutopia article (2023), “6 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Save Time,” described his 2
months of experimenting with one online program designed to use conversational
language to assist people with research and writing tasks. Finley’s article highlighted
the site’s ability to streamline planning and generate content for handouts.
Encouraged by Finley’s experiment, I began exploring ways ChatGPT (https://
chat.openai.com), a free AI website, could support educators with everyday tasks.
As an educational methods instructor, I was especially interested in how it might
assist student teaching candidates to design vibrant, standards-based lessons.

Prep Period
ChatGPT requires a simple email registration and site password to log on to the
online resource. To interact with the site, users type a prompt to start the conversation.
That prompt can be a question, a statement, or simply a phrase that helps AI gather
information. My first prompt experiment read: “List 20 culturally diverse American
suffragists active during the period of 1900 to 1920. Include a brief statement about
each person’s contributions to the cause.” Within seconds, the ChatGPT site began
typing a starting point list that could be used for a jigsaw-style research activity
related to voting rights for women. The prepared list of well-known figures in the
movement would be a time saver. A teacher could then move on to the more nuanced
role of planning how further research would be used for a classroom activity such as
creating a slide show or bulletin board display.
Next, I experimented with typical assignment-generation tasks. My prompt
read: “Write a set of instructions for a high school assignment creating campaign
items for the women’s suffrage movement from 1900 to 1920.” ChatGPT produced
instructions written in six steps. Each step included useful advice. For example,
in the category of design, the response recommended using a program like Adobe
Photoshop or Canva. Directions suggested that students “use colors and imagery that
are relevant to the suffrage movement, such as the colors of the National Women’s
Party (purple, white, and gold) or images of suffragettes and protest events.” I copied
the ChatGPT response and pasted it into a Google Doc where I made a few wording

42 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators