Description
What? Give Copilot a question and ask it to reformulate this in several different ways.
Why? Asking students questions during live sessions can help keep them engaged, but it can take time to design questions in a way that will best scaffold discussion. Copilot can help us brainstorm different ways to ask questions to help stretch learners and add variety to our lessons. These questions could be posed to the whole class or used as prompts for pair or group discussion.
Instructions
Step 1: Think of a question you could ask students about a topic you teach.
Step 2: Go to Copilot (office.com/chat) and sign in with your Coventry account. If you’re already using Copilot, just select the ‘New chat’ button at the top right.
Step 3: Start the conversation by copying and pasting the following prompt into Copilot, then select the ‘Submit’ button (the arrow at the bottom-right):
🤖 Prompt (click to expand, then copy and paste into Copilot)
I want you to help me prepare engaging questions to use with my students at Coventry University. First, ask me for the topic and the question that I want you to reformulate. Then give me a list of how I can reformulate the question in each of the following ways:
Reverse question: provide a possible answer to the question and ask ‘If this is the answer, what is the question?’. It’s essential that the answer you provide doesn’t make it too obvious what the question is. For example, if the original question was ‘What is one advantage of open-questions?’, you could change this to ‘This type of question encourages critical thinking’ – If this is the answer, what is the question?
Statement: make the question into a statement and follow it with ‘Do you agree or disagree with this statement?’
Rank statements: make the question into five varied statements with different viewpoints on the topic that students have to rank in the order that they agree with them. The statements must be opinions about the same topic that it’s possible to agree or disagree with, not just disparate facts. It’s essential you avoid directly contradictory statements (whereby agreeing with one statement means you can’t agree with the others), for example avoid things like ‘X is more important than Y’, ‘X is just as important as Y’, ‘X is less important than Y’.
Challenge assumptions: make the question into something that could challenge common assumptions, e.g. ‘Are open-questions always more effective than closed questions? When might closed-questions be more appropriate?’
Consider implications: make the questions focus on the application of the concept in a hypothetical scenario, e.g. ‘What would happen if a student only studied the day before a test?’
Step 4: Copilot should ask you for the topic and the question you want to reformulate. Type answers to its questions and select ‘Submit’.
Step 5: Evaluate Copilot’s output. If you want to, give it feedback (what did it do well / badly) and ask it to generate more examples.
Important: Always check Copilot’s output. Generative AI tools can hallucinate (create plausible but incorrect information).