AI in Education: A Practical Guide to LLMs and Beyond

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming higher education. This guide, developed as part of the Digital Transformation Plan, aims to assist university staff in effectively integrating AI into their teaching and administrative practices. It acknowledges varying levels of AI adoption among faculty and staff, offering support for beginners and advanced users alike. The goal is to empower everyone to explore and leverage AI's potential for innovation and development. The guide encourages creative experimentation and personalization of AI tools to maximize their benefits in specific contexts.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are advanced AI systems trained on vast amounts of text data. They identify linguistic patterns and generate human-like text. LLMs use deep neural networks to process and analyze language, breaking down text into tokens (words or fragments). By predicting the next token, they create coherent and relevant responses. Think of it like connecting numbered dots to reveal a hidden image. While LLMs can provide useful responses, they don't guarantee accuracy and may reproduce biases from their training data. Always review LLM-generated content to ensure its correctness.

While this guide focuses on LLMs, numerous other AI tools can be valuable in various contexts. These tools offer specialized functionalities and often provide better results than LLMs for specific tasks. Examples include tools for generating music (Udio, Suno), voices (Eleven Labs, Lovo), videos (Runway, Synthesia), and images (Stable Diffusion, Midjourney). This list is not exhaustive, as the field of AI is constantly evolving.

A prompt is a text instruction given to an AI model to guide its response. Clear and specific prompts are crucial for obtaining useful results. Strategies for creating effective prompts include: using clear and direct instructions, providing context (e.g., target audience), dividing complex requests into smaller parts, providing concrete examples, using strong directives like 'You must' or 'Your task is,' and even incorporating elements of empathy or rewards. Remember that while LLMs can recognize emotions in language, they don't experience them.

Ethical considerations are paramount when using AI. It's important to understand good and bad practices, privacy policies, and data protection measures. Maintain confidentiality when using LLMs. Be aware of the European AI Act, which sets a regulatory framework for AI. Consult the glossary for key terms. Always prioritize responsible and ethical AI use.

AI can assist with various teaching tasks, including lesson planning, creating learning resources, designing activities, and developing assessments. Examples of prompts for lesson planning include generating lesson plans based on specific learning objectives and creating diverse activities to engage students. For resource creation, AI can help generate summaries, create quizzes, and develop interactive exercises. AI can also assist in designing engaging activities and creating rubrics for evaluating student work.

AI tools can significantly aid academic research. They can assist in defining research topics, crafting titles, and structuring articles. AI can help write introductions, motivate research, conduct literature reviews, refine research methodologies, analyze results, facilitate discussions, and formulate conclusions. AI can also be used to create abstracts, manage references, and communicate research findings. Explore generative AI tools specifically designed for research purposes.

AI can streamline administrative tasks by assisting with communications, generating summaries, planning and organizing, and creating content. AI can help draft emails, create announcements, and personalize communications. It can also summarize documents, extract key information, and generate reports. AI can assist with scheduling, organizing meetings, and managing projects. Furthermore, AI can generate content for websites, social media, and other platforms.