As the new school year kicks off in the Northern Hemisphere, we are highlighting a few useful ways that schools, institutions, and educators can use the new wave of AI tools. You can easily try out some of the latest Azure OpenAI Service tools for education institutions, experiment with prompts, and learn tips for using AI for teaching and learning. In addition, we are sharing a new short “Getting Started with AI in Education” whitepaper written by Dr. Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton and Dr. Lilach Mollick, Director of Pedagogy for Wharton Interactive, two Professors that have been on the leading edge of AI in education. Let’s break down the 3 topics for today!
Topic 1: Azure OpenAI on your data
Educational institutions can now easily bring their data to contextualize interactions with Azure OpenAI through a new preview offer called Azure OpenAI on your data. This offer enables you to “ground” GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 interactions on your own institutional data so that you may privately and securely have a conversation with your school or institution’s data without needing to train or fine-tune the models. When using Azure OpenAI on your data, your institutional data is protected and will not be used to train or improve the Azure OpenAI models.
One of the key benefits of Azure OpenAI on your data is its ability to tailor the content of conversational AI. Because you can give the model access to, and it can reference specific sources to support its responses, answers are not only based on pretrained knowledge but also on the latest information available in the designated data source. This grounding data also helps the model avoid generating responses based on outdated or incorrect information. This Tech Community blog announcing the Azure OpenAI on your data public preview gives you more details on getting started, and we have a few examples below.
Azure Open AI on your data, coupled with the prompts from our repository below and GPT-4, empowers schools to rapidly develop dedicated AI chatbots that can transform the learning experience, enhance productivity, and streamline administrative processes within the educational environment.
Topic 2 – GitHub Prompt Library for Education
We are thrilled to introduce the Prompts for Education prompt library, a resource for educators, staff, and students to harness the power of Bing Chat and Azure OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology. Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, staff member, or student, this curated collection of prompts is designed for you.
We’ve worked with Dr. Ethan and Dr. Lilach Mollick to take their custom Educator and Student prompts and make these part of this new Prompt Library. A few of these examples are below, as well as some additional prompts we’ve added for you to try out.
Educators can use these prompt examples to begin creating engaging lessons and respond to student queries, while staff can use these prompts as a starting point to streamline administrative tasks and improve productivity. Students can explore subjects in depth, asking questions that are focused on their individual learning needs.
Imagine using a prompt from the Prompts for Education prompt library that aligns closely with your educational needs, whether it’s to help craft engaging lessons, responding to student inquiries, or streamlining administrative tasks. With the Azure OpenAI On Your Data feature, these prompts can be transformed into specialized AI chatbots, effortlessly deployed as Azure Web Apps or Power Virtual Agents. These chatbots, powered by the conversational AI capabilities of Azure OpenAI’s GPT-4, can interact directly with your own data, providing context-aware and up-to-date responses.
We’re always working on incorporating your feedback to improve the prompts for specific teaching and learning functions. We strongly encourage your input and engagement. Currently hosted on GitHub, this open-source project is free for all, so join us in transforming education with the power of AI. Unlock new possibilities for efficiency and learning today!
We encourage schools to leverage Bing Chat or the GPT-4 model within Azure OpenAI instead of GPT-3.5 when possible for the best experience. Additionally, due to the probabilistic nature of large language models, responses will be different each time you run the prompts.
3) Getting Started with AI for Educators – Dr. Ethan Mollick and Dr. Lilach Mollick
Two trailblazing educators on the forefront of AI have been Dr. Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton and Dr. Lilach Mollick, Director of Pedagogy for Wharton Interactive, both at the University of Pennsylvania. From Ethan’s popular One Useful Thing Substack and his X account (formerly Twitter), their new YouTube Playlist, or their work with students and educators at Wharton, Ethan and Lilach have been leading the way for educators in the world of AI. To help educators and institutions get started with AI, Ethan and Lilach have put together a short whitepaper called “Getting Started with AI for Educators,” which is a great starting point for educators looking to better understand this space. We’ve made this document available in both Word and PDF format.
Getting Started with AI for Educators – Ethan and Lilach Mollick (PDF)
Getting Started with AI for Educators – Ethan and Lilach Mollick (Word)
We hope you find these resources valuable as educators, school leaders and IT Administrators. As the new school year begins in the Northern Hemisphere, we encourage customers to learn more about AI in EDU from the Mollicks’ paper, explore our new AI for Educators course on Microsoft Learn, try out and contribute to our new Prompt library, as well as begin to explore Azure OpenAI on your district’s data.
Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education