Categories
12doAI amidoinitrite Concept Edtech education elearning learning and teaching learning design UX

The 12 Days of AI: Day 11 – Creating discussion topics

A of variety of humans, animals, fish, aliens and kanjis sitting around a large round ornate wooden table sipping coffee and eating cakes while chatting about the universe in the middle of an empty desert, in a colourful 60s comic style.
A of variety of humans, animals, fish, aliens and kanjis sitting around a large round ornate wooden table sipping coffee and eating cakes while chatting about the universe in the middle of an empty desert, in a colourful 60s comic style.

For Day 11 of The 12 Days of AI, the 20 minute task is to learn about TeacherMatic, a multi-feature AI tool that could be useful for HE educators.

To complete today’s task I need to use TeacherMatic to create some classroom discussion topics, a plenary session activity and another activity of my choice.

Sounds good, right?

Oh, and there’s always an alternative AI-powered tool for this kinda task, which have been listed on There’s an AI for that.

Image Creator from Designer: A of variety of mechanised humans, androids and enhanced animals wearing tech gear and using game controllers to control a grinder like machine to create questions and answers, in a colourful 60s comic style.
Image Creator from Designer: A of variety of mechanised humans, androids and enhanced animals wearing tech gear and using game controllers to control a grinder like machine to create questions and answers, in a colourful 60s comic style.

Creating discussions with TeacherMatic

For the sake of the discussion topics activity I used ChatGPT to generate class materials (Commercialising Research and Entrepreneurship: Bridging Innovation to Markets) to use as a reference along with specifying keywords, complexity and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Ta da – the group discussion topic was generated by TeacherMatic (along with some other noise).

Ta da – the two plenary session activities were generated by TeacherMatic (along with some other noise).

Ta da – some Laboratory Sessions were generated by TeacherMatic from ChatGPT prompt, with no additional noise.

Image Creator from Designer: AI assistant reflecting on their life and work in a endless lake or similar body of water, in a colourful 60s comic style.
Image Creator from Designer: AI assistant reflecting on their life and work in a endless lake or similar body of water, in a colourful 60s comic style.

Reflecting on the Day 11 task

What’d I think of TeacherMatic? I thought it was pretty good at generating content in specific teaching and learning formats.

Do you think you will use it in your teaching? Certainly, if someone was able to cover the upgrade fee.

What features did you like about it and what didn’t you like? Of the three features that I used, they all worked relatively within my expectations: they produced content in response to a prompt I provided, which is great. The content could then be further revised and refined as needed. For me, TeacherMatic or any of the other tools that I’ve explored (and their content) during the The 12 Days of AI is not necessarily the the final content that’s going to be shipped – there’s going to be some further refinement and tweaking before it’s released. I don’t expect the content to meet all of my needs or be a silver bullet.

Is it too focused on secondary schools rather than Art School teaching? Possibly, but again, I feel whatever is generated by an AI-powered tool is the beginning or quick-start for some further refinement and contextualisation – it just does some of the early heavy lifting.

What will be its long term impact on HE teaching and learning? Educators will be freed-up from some of the more mechanical aspects (content and/or resource creation) or be given a boost by the assistance of AI tools.

Could teachers become consumers of ‘recycled expertise, rather than members of a shared community of practice’? Possibly, there’s a potential for that to happen (as with any technology) where a reliance may impact quality. That’s why organisations have standards and other quality assurance measures to provide educators with frameworks. And also, many organisations have personnel to provide educators with support, too. If you approach AI-tools as helpers or kick-starters and not the finished product, there’s always scope to go beyond what’s been generated.

The following comments from other learners on Day 11 resonated most with me – really insightful!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php