How to Design Essay Assignments if Students can Access ChatGPT or Other Similar Tools

(Created by MidJourney under Basic Plan)

 

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT currently can communicate with clients through text conservations and can execute complicated language tasks, including summarization. Alternatives to ChatGPT include Perplexity.AI and Quora Poe. These bots can facilitate teaching, learning and assessment in the long term. Meanwhile, in this blog post, we mainly discuss on:

  1. How to identify essays through detection tools or other mechanisms, and
  2. How to design ChatGPT-resilient essay assignments and other assessments.

Identifying essays that ChatGPT creates

It is always challenging to detect essays that ChatGPT creates. Since ChatGPT created different responses every time, even with the same prompt, it is difficult for “Turnitin Similarity” to detect contents created by ChatGPT.  As told by colleagues from Turnitin, Turnitin is currently developing tools for detection.

There are existing detection tools, including GPTZero, Open AI Text Classifier and Writer AI Content Detector. These detectors often detect the perplexity and burstiness of the article to identify if the article is created by humans. You can also simply import the article to ChatGPT to calculate the perplexity and burstiness of the article. These tools are user-friendly, but these detectors often cannot provide a correct judgement in our testing. 

If multiple essays from the same students are provided, we can check whether the writing style across essays is similar. Teachers can analyse manually or through computational linguistics tools like Coh-Metrix. For example, students often write essays with American or British spelling only, and with a similar standard deviation of the mean length of paragraphs and the mean length of sentences as well as referential cohesion (and some other computational linguistics metrics).

Besides analysing the content and writing style, we can also examine the metadata of the essay submission files. If students submit the essay through MS Word files, you can check if there are abnormalities in the properties of the essay file. If students used MS Word throughout the writing process, there should be several revisions, and the date created and modified should not be too close. Students can also provide a version history if students used Google Docs for writing.

Designing ChatGPT-resilient essay assignments

Besides analysing the content of the essay, you can also identify essays by analysing the writing process. For example, you can ask students to: 

  • Submit draft notes or a writing plan in the early stage of the assignment (and compare them with the final essay) 
  • Record the writing process through Zoom screen sharing 
  • Reflect on the writing process and evaluate the meta-cognitive process of the student

Teachers can also ask students to write multiple essays such that we can examine if the writing style is different across essays.

As reported in recent studies published on arXiv (Study 1 and Study 2), ChatGPT currently is still not perfect in some reasoning skills, including inductive reasoning, non-textual semantic reasoning (spatial reasoning, mathematical reasoning), multi-hop reasoning, physical reasoning and psychological reasoning. Teachers can consider designing essay questions that partially assess the abovementioned reasoning skills. Teachers can read these studies for more details and get inspired to create appropriate essay questions. For example, 

  • Teachers can think about designing assignments that require explanation through infographics, figures and maps. 
  • Teachers can add atypical requirements that systems often overlook, such as “In the third sentence of your response, the first word should be started with the letter “C” and one of the words should be started with the letter “V” “. 
  • Teachers can ask students to provide more references to support their arguments.

These practices can increase the hurdles of directly copying content generated from AI tools as answers.

Teachers are also encouraged to assess students in multiple ways and examine whether students’ performance in essay assessments aligns with other assessments.

Using ChatGPT ethically in assignments and T&L

If you allow students to use ChatGPT in your assignments, besides providing proper citations, you can consider asking students to write an additional reflection on the following:

  • The comparison between human development and AI-facilitated development
  • Their experience in using ChatGPT to speed up the development process
  • Current limitations and how the AI-facilitated development process could be improved.

You can find more ideas from Dr Ethan Mollick from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr Sean McMinn from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on using AI tools to facilitate teaching, learning and assessments. Other interesting ChatGPT prompts can be found online.

 

Author: Dr Leon Lei

The author has used Grammarly to polish the article, but has not used ChatGPT in the writing process. The recording of the writing process can be found at https://youtu.be/1eD86rorzCA. The article may be further updated without notice.

HKU NEW FinTech Course: FinTech Technologies on edX

Learn the top FinTech technologies that are transforming today’s world of finance and technology

FinTech is not only a major strategic focus in the banking and finance industry around the world. The fast-moving FinTech technologies also create opportunities and pose challenges to global financial institutions, large tech giants, techfins, retailers and other global companies and the legal and compliance sectors. Besides technology innovations and R&D in FinTech, nurturing FinTech talents and attracting students and professionals to the FinTech arena is very important.

 

In this MOOC, we will discuss six advanced technologies that drive transformation in the finance and technology industries today from a layman’s perspective. The contents will focus on how these technologies are used in FinTech applications including, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP) and big data analytics in daily scenarios such as insutech, robo-advisory, intelligent transport monitoring, applications in green finance, as well as, blockchain and distributed ledger technology in banking and DiFi.

Click to learn more

E-learning for All – A Toolkits Series

(For HKU staff and students only)

Instructional design, educational technologies, video production, user interface, online collaboration, digital literacy … and so on. These are the key elements that often come up in people’s mind when talking about the development of online curriculum. Many teachers are willing to enrich student learning experiences or make learning more effective by turning their course into a flipped classroom or a blended learning format but feel somewhat headless on how to start.

The use of powerful and user-friendly e-learning tools is essential for teachers to generate engaging contents and learning activities in the online context. Therefore, we’ve prepared the E-learning for All – A Toolkits Series workshops to introduce a range of EdTech tools that can help teachers transform their courses and enhance learning experiences. 

Diverse tools in the current market are providing great possibilities, this workshop will focus on the following most common toolkits and provide related examples. We hope that, with creative, cost-effective, and easy-to-master technologies, everyone can be an instructional designer!

Venue: Virtual Venue – via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Leon Lei, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Ms Marie Tao, Ms Yidan Li, Ms Yuyue Wang
Number of seats: 300 per workshop
Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?UEID=85144

▪  Miro workshop 12:30 – 13:30, 2 Dec 2022 (Friday)
▪  Camtasia workshop (Basic)* 12:30 – 13:30, 6 Dec 2022 (Tuesday)
▪  Camtasia workshop (Advanced)* 12:30 – 13:30, 7 Dec 2022 (Wednesday)
▪  Canva workshop 12:30 – 13:30, 9 Dec 2022 (Friday)
▪  Notion workshop 12:30 – 13:30, 20 Dec 2022 (Tuesday)

*Please indicate if you’re a Mac user or a Windows user in the registration

All are welcome!

For enquiries, please contact us at enquiry@teli.hku.hk.

HKU MOOC is edX Prize Top Finalist for 5 consecutive years


 

edX announced the world’s Top MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) shortlisted for 2022 edX Prize – Innovation in Online Teaching on Nov 17 2022. HKU MOOC So You Want To Be A Surgeon? is named 2022 edX Prize Finalist this year. The MOOC is led by Dr. Ian Yu-Hong Wong, Professor Stephen Wing-Keung Cheng and Professor Kent-Man Chu of the Department of Surgery with the support of HKU’s Technology Enriched Learning Initiative unit. This is the fifth consecutive year that HKU MOOC has gained global recognition as edX Prize Finalist.

According to Anant Agarwal, edX Founder and Chief Platform Officer at 2U, “the MOOCs on edX are committed to provide the world’s best open education to more than 46 million learners.” In addressing the prestigious 2022 edX Prize, Anant said, “this year’s finalists are recognized for creating best-in-class online learning experiences that deliver learner-centric, impactful outcomes on the edX platform.”

Being recognised as top 10 finalist out of thousands of MOOCs for five consecutive years attest to HKU’s continued pursuit of excellence and dedication in online course design and production and this achievement reflects the course team’s innovative spirit to inspire and upskill learning beyond international boundaries and time zones.


First-of-its-kind co-production by 15 surgical subspecialties

HKU So You Want To Be A Surgeon? is a first-of-its-kind surgery MOOC co-created by 40 world-class surgical experts from 15 subspecialties of HKU’s Department of Surgery (including vascular, thyroid, breast, gastrointestinal, colorectal, hepatobiliary and pancreatic, transplant, head and neck, plastic and reconstructive surgeries, urology, paediatric, trauma, cardiothoracic surgeries, and neurosurgery). This unique co-creation truly exemplifies the team work and cross-disciplinary collaboration that are crucial in carrying out a life-saving operation.

21st century work-based learning experience

The MOOC aims to help young students aspiring to become surgeons and physicians to learn about common clinical and surgical conditions, and modern advances and cutting-edge technologies in surgical practice at HKU Medicine and in the world. To create a robust learning experience for the 21st century learners, the course integrated subject domain learning with a work-based learning experience (WBL), providing career-relevant knowledge and experience sharing by 30+ local and international surgeons from different career stages.

The role of gender and achieving work-life balance for female surgeons

The job of a surgeon is both physically and mentally demanding for both male and female surgeons – one has to endure long hours of extremely high-focused work in an operating theater without rest. Today, gender perceptions in pursuing surgery as a career have changed and more aspiring female students have joined the world of surgery. Achieving work-life balance is never easy, in particular for the highly demanding work of a surgeon. Learners in the course are invited to view and follow six female surgeons who are at different stages of their career to learn about what surgery means to these females, and how they found work-life balance and job satisfaction.

Register the Course on edX: https://www.edx.org/course/surgery

Course Registration: on-going

Course Length: 6 Weeks

Prerequisite: No entry requirement

Course Payment: Free of charge for all learners in the Audit Track

(Audit Learners have an option to upgrade for a Verified Certificate, see the course page for details.)

edX Prize 2022 Finalists:
https://press.edx.org/2022-edx-prize-finalists
Career 360 via EdX
https://www.careers360.com/university/the-university-of-hong-kong-hong-kong/so-you-want-be-surgeon-certification-course

Free HKU Online Course: Doing Gender and Why it Matters

Doing Gender and Why it Matters (4th Re-run) is a 6-week MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) taught by more than 20 faculty members from HKU and professionals engaged in gender-related developments in Asia. The course starts on 28 September on edX.

Doing Gender and Why it Matters is taught by over 20 HKU instructors,  practitioners and academics in the field.

Why are we creating an online course about gender? More specifically, why does gender matter?

As you will be aware of from recent media coverage, gender is everywhere in society. Our daily lives are embedded in gender. From our social roles, to our attitudes and behaviours, to our interactions with others, and in our work, gender is ever present. Now with the call for gender equality gaining public prominence, we hope to give you the tools and lens for understanding what exactly is gender – moreover, to be aware of certain gender stereotypes and unconscious biases that are ever present.

Let’s take this 6-week journey to unveil myths, taboos, and knowledge about gender together, navigating cross-culturally, historically, philosophically and sociologically. Some of the questions we’ll explore include: How do we define gender? What assumptions and biases emerge in our relationships within the family, work and politics? How does the media construct gender? How should we interpret the recent #metoo campaign? Sexual harassment, discrimination, sexual violence are gender relevant social issues that we will take you through.

What to expect after taking this course?

After six weeks, you will become an expert on gender issues, and be able to have your own critical perspectives about them to evaluate current events. Even more, to start having these conversations with your friends and family and make an impact!

What’s new in the 4th rerun course?

A new thematic unit of “Gender in Health System and Policy Gender” with a series of video lessons in Sexuality Education is added to the “Private and Public Spheres” unit in the Rerun course. Among the new topics are HIV/AIDS, The Social Construction of Female and Male Body and Sexuality Education.

A bit more about us…

‘Doing Gender and Why it Matters?’ is MOOC course offered by the University of Hong Kong. Led by Prof. Karen Joe Laidler from Department of Sociology, in collaboration with the Women Study’s Research Centre (WSRC), this course is a joint effort of scholars from different discipline such as law, history, culture, sexuality, who feel strongly about gender issues in Hong Kong, and wider globe.

Course Registration: https://www.edx.org/course/doing-gender-and-why-it-matters

Course Start Date: 28 Sep 2022

Course Length: 6 Weeks

Prerequisite: No entry requirement

Course Payment: Free of charge for all learners in the Audit Track

(Audit Learners have an option to upgrade for a Verified Certificate, see the course page for details.)

 Click to Enrol Now  

Miro’ the blended learning design: Hands-on Workshop

Message from Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative

Miro’ the blended learning design: Hands-on Workshop
(For HKU staff and students only)

Date: 20 September 2022 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:30pm – 1:45pm
Venue: Virtual Venue – via zoom
Speaker: Dr Leon Lei, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Ms Marie Tao, Ms Colleen Chung, Mr Sunny Kong
Number of seats: 60
Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?UEID=84104

The university has been exploring and incorporating various technologies to embrace the challenge of distance learning and enrich student learning experiences. Miro is one of the popular whiteboard tools that is often integrated in the learning activities to enhance online collaboration.

To help both teachers and students get better prepared for the new semester and bring some insights to the blended learning design, in this workshop, we will demonstrate some basic and advanced Miro functions. While practicing the Miro functions, we will together brainstorm and walk through some good practices of online assessment and the application of Bloom Digital Taxonomy (BDT) in coursework development under different classroom settings.

To have hands-on practices in the workshop, it would be helpful for participants to register the Miro Education Plan to have full access to the functions before joining the workshop. Please join the workshop with a computer / laptop.

For students, please register via: https://miro.com/contact/education/?ref=Student
For teachers, please register via: https://miro.com/contact/education/?ref=Educator

All are welcome!

For enquiries, please contact us at enquiry@teli.hku.hk

CIC Course Design Workshop

Venue:
Zoom (The link will be sent to registered participants 1 day before the event.)

Description:
This hands-on workshop provides teachers with an opportunity to learn how to convert an existing undergraduate course into a communication-intensive course. A communication-intensive course is a course where communication knowledge, skills, and attributes are taught alongside course content; it has communication-related course learning outcomes and communication-rich assessments and learning activities. This workshop will be 1 hour but there will be an optional extra 30 minutes to discuss your course with the presenters.

Registration:

Choose 1 workshop date below. If these time slots are not suitable, please send an email to cics@hku.hk to arrange another time.

16th August: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=81317

For enquiries, please contact Dr. Michelle Raquel (cics@hku.hk).

Multimedia Production Workshop (Camtasia, Canva)

Date:
10 August 2022 (Camtasia – Basic) Registration

12 August 2022 (Camtasia – Advanced) Registration

18 August 2022 (Advanced)Registration

Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Venue: Virtual Venue – via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Leon Lei, Ms Cindy Liang, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Ms Marie Tao
Number of seats: 30 per workshop

Multimedia (e.g., infographics and educational videos) have become essential to teaching, learning and assessment. Educators can integrate multimedia content for delivering content in many online/hybrid classes. Students can also produce multimedia content for their assignments. The challenge is understanding and exploring how best we might produce multimedia effectively.

Upon completion of the workshops, participants will be able to identify the opportunities, challenges, and tactics of producing multimedia for teaching and learning.

In the Canva workshop, we will introduce:

  • the interface of Canva 2021
  • recording, editing and sharing your first infographic
  • exporting and sharing your first infographic

In the Camtasia (Basic) workshop, we will introduce:

  • the interface of Camtasia 2021
  • recording, editing and sharing your first video
  • exporting and sharing your first video

In the Camtasia (Advanced) workshop, we will introduce:

  • selecting area that you want to record
  • adding annotations and transitions
  • creating advanced animations
  • adding sound effects, including removing noise

Free HKU Faculty of Dentistry Online Course – Biomaterials and Your Health

HKU Faculty of Dentistry presents a 4-Week Biomaterials and Your Health Massive Open Online Course on edX platform (https://www.edx.org/course/biomaterials-and-your-health). In this course, you will explore novel biomaterials and biotechnologies in oral health care with Professor Jukka Matinlinna and Dr James Tsoi along with more than 20 dental practitioners and researchers across 10 dental specialties in different parts of the world, Europe, the United States, China and Hong Kong. You will learn about the development of biomaterials and biomaterial research in dental health care. The course starts on 19 July 2022.

 

Click here to sign up and learn

What is this course about?

Would you be interested to go inside the laboratories of researchers and hear their stories of exciting biomaterials research? Would you be curious to find out what they discovered about cutting-edge technologies such as nanoneedle in oral cancer? And learn about biomimetic dentistry and the implications and applications of polymeric materials, resin composites, and silicon in today’s oral health care? In this 4-week course, you will find out about these and more.

How do you join the course?

This 4-week online course is available free of charge with no entry requirements for participants around the world. The first course run starts on 19 July 2022. The course is recurrent and will be re-run after this debut. 

Who is this course for?

The course is specially designed to serve multiple groups of learners: From dentistry students to dental practitioners who wish to broaden their knowledge in dental materials science and practitioners in related fields such as clinical medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, material science, and engineering, and in particular those who wish to make a difference in materials research in tomorrow’s oral health care development.

General information about Biomaterials and Your Health on edX:

Course Registration: https://www.edx.org/course/biomaterials-and-your-health 

Course Start Date: 19 July 2022
Course Length: 4 Weeks
Prerequisite: No entry requirement
Course Payment: Free of charge for all learners in the Audit Track
(Audit Learners have an option to upgrade for a Verified Certificate, see the course page for details.)

For enquiries, please send your message to gdco@hku.hk.

User Guide to HKU Coursera

Coursera launches a free Coursera for Campus Student campaign and HKU is eligible for participating in this campaign, therefore HKU students and staff now can enjoy a wide range of massive open online courses (MOOCs) sponsored by HKU and supported by Coursera. With the sponsorship, you may enroll in courses under the course catalog and get a certificate for free after course completion. This guide will introduce you to more details about learning with HKU Coursera.

What is Coursera?

Coursera is a worldwide MOOC learning platform that offers access to online courses, certifications, and degrees in various subjects. You can learn from leading universities and companies anywhere and anytime. Some universities join the Coursera partnership to enable university students to have free access to limited courses such as Guided Projects, Courses, and Specializations. HKU is one of the participating partners. 

Create an account with HKU license on Coursera

For current HKU students and staff, to create an account with HKU sponsorship on Coursera, you will need to fill in an application form. Following steps may help:

  1. Click ‘Join for Free’ on https://www.coursera.org/;
  2. Sign up for a new Coursera account with your HKU email and set a password in the pop-up window;
  3. Join “Coursera for Campus” and send the registration form via this link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=70153 (HKU Portal required);
  4. Submit the form and wait for confirmation.

Start learning by identifying your learning goals

You can search for any specific courses with the keywords on the searching bar. Specifically, you can search courses by themes, categories, or the name of any university. On the course information page, you can see the course description, syllabus, instructor information, difficulty level, references, etc. You can also set your weekly goals and link the course reminder to your Google Calendar. You are advised to watch the video for more information.

Course management and Name verification

When you land on Coursera, you can access ‘My Courses’, ‘Profile’, ‘My Purchases’, ‘Settings’, ‘Updates’, ‘Accomplishments’, and ‘Help Center’ through the button (the one with your name on it) on the top-right corner.

You may need to verify your real name to ensure you are able to receive a certificate after you complete a course. Therefore, you may go to your account and verify your name with a few steps:

  1. Go to ‘Settings’, and
  2. Click on ‘Verify My Name’ and complete the verification.

You may watch the video for a demonstration.

Learning record preservation

You will lose all access to Coursera after graduation (for students) or resignation/retirement (for staff). Therefore, you are strongly advised to back up your learning records by changing your login email account from the HKU one to your personal one. You can add/change your personal email account by following these steps:

  1. Click on the top-right side button (the one with your name on it);
  2. Select and click on ‘Settings’;
  3. Check out the section ‘Personal Account’ and add an alternative email;
  4. Save the setting.

Note: Please make sure you did not register a Coursera account with your alternative email previously. Otherwise, you cannot combine the learning records from two existing email addresses.

Four types of learning programs on Coursera

Coursera offers four types of learning programs, Guided Project, Course, Specialization, and Professional Certificate respectively.

  • Guided Project: Guided Project provides step-by-step instructions and you may complete a Guided Project within 2 hours. You can learn job-relevant skills guided by a subject matter expert and may earn a shareable e-certificate after completing a Guided Project.
  • Course: A Course usually includes video lectures, auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, and discussion forums. Courses are provided by universities or organizations all over the world. You may earn a shareable e-certificate after completing a Course. 
  • Specialization: A Specialization includes several courses to support learners to earn a specific career skill. After completing a series of rigorous courses, you can receive a shareable Specialization Certificate.
  • Professional Certificate: Professional Certificate provides knowledge and skills to help learners to start a new career. There are several courses in one Professional Certificate and you can apply new skills to hands-on projects. After completing, you can receive a career credential.

Add Certificates to your LinkedIn Profile

You will receive a course certificate to show your accomplishment. After receiving the e-certificate(s), you can add to your LinkedIn profile to showcase your knowledge and professional achievements. 

You can find your certificates in ‘Accomplishments’, then click ‘Add to LinkedIn’ to view the details of the certificate. Following steps will guide you to add the certification details to your LinkedIn profile:

  1. Go to your LinkedIn homepage and log into your LinkedIn account;
  2. Click on ‘Me’ at the top-right corner and then click ‘View Profile’;
  3. Click ‘Recommended’ and ‘Add licenses & certifications’;
  4. Fill in the blanks with the Coursera course and certification details (i.e., Name, Issued Organization, credential ID, and URL);
  5. Save the change.

You can also refer to the video for more information.

HKU Courses on Coursera and edX

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) launches courses on the e-learning platforms Coursera and edX. You can browse the HKU web page – https://tl.hku.hk/hkuonline/ for the course lists. You can also view courses on two platforms: