AI in University

Author: Dr. János Nagyillés

Introduction

This section of our website encourages collaborative thinking and aims to inspire how AI technology can be used in various aspects of university teaching, particularly in areas where there is a greater opportunity to engage students and provide them with creative tasks.

In recent years, a new trend has emerged in university education that challenges the teaching methods that university instructors have been socialized into over previous periods. It has become evident that the two most commonly used teaching methods up until now, frontal lectures and seminar work, have significantly lost their effectiveness. The reasons for this are twofold: first, the depth and structure of knowledge that students bring from secondary education to university have changed; second, the methods of acquiring knowledge that were effective for past generations are less effective or even fail for current university students. Today’s average student relates differently to the primary source of large volumes of quality knowledge—the text—and processes it differently.

There are numerous methods to address this situation: the fact that they are rarely applied in university education is more due to the overload on instructors than a lack of knowledge or willingness to change their previously successful and experienced teaching methods.

AI offers numerous applications for use in the humanities, particularly in the teaching of literature. The following examples illustrate how AI can be integrated into an ancient literature seminar. Certain AI-provided methods can also be suitable for use in related lectures.

In a seminar environment, we will focus on two key areas: first, the individual and group processing of the text in question, and second, the effective teaching of literary historical data. If the literary work and the utilized literary histories, articles, and texts are available in a format that ChatGPT can handle, AI provides opportunities for both individual and group processing, which can make teaching and independent learning more effective. Additionally, we must not forget that acquiring knowledge in certain areas is not a solitary endeavour but can also be accomplished through teamwork – this method simultaneously develops creativity and, during engagement with the material, can have a beneficial effect on the development of verbal skills and the cultivation of debate culture.

Methods and Examples

Below, we present inspiring methods and examples for university literary seminar work using AI.

Prompt used with ChatGPT:

"I want to use the ChatGPT technique in university literature education. The goals are: 1) to engage students with interesting tasks; 2) to place significant emphasis on teamwork; 3) it is very important that students acquire the necessary factual knowledge of literature in an entertaining and inspiring form. The semester’s material covers the epic genre in ancient Greek and Roman literature. What ideas do you have for successful and inspiring seminar work?"

Response:

Incorporating the ChatGPT technique into university literature education indeed offers an exciting and innovative opportunity to engage students and to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge in an entertaining way. Below are some concrete ideas that can help achieve successful and inspiring seminar work for processing the epic genre in ancient Greek and Roman literature. These ideas will help students actively participate in the learning process, work together, and enjoyably acquire knowledge about epics.

1. Interactive Epic Writing:

Divide the students into smaller groups and assign each group the task of writing their own epic. With the help of ChatGPT, they can generate inspiring opening lines, character descriptions, or plot ideas. The groups can later present and discuss each other’s works.

Since an epic, aside from certain specialized versions, signifies a lengthy poem, writing the entire text may not be feasible. However, as a group or individual task, they can:

• Create the content for an extended mythic narrative in epic form.
• Divide the completed plot outline into epic songs at the turning points of the plot, thus creating the full structure of the epic.
• Designate the places for using the usual epic genre elements: invocation or repeated invocations; if there is a battle in the story, where to place aristeia (feats of valor); where to include an epic catalogue; where epic description is needed, and where an epic digression can be inserted; how to psychologically motivate the behaviour of certain characters at the narrative nodes.

The topic could be a longer but manageable Greek myth, such as the part of the Theseus story where he sails to Crete, kills the Minotaur with Ariadne’s help, thus freeing Athens from the blood tribute, but abandons Ariadne on the return voyage, leading to her curse of forgetfulness, which causes his father’s death upon arrival in Athens.

The task includes uncovering various existing myth variants in ancient literature. During the solution, students will encounter the unique problems of epic writing. The task might also include having some students who are inclined to do so, compose certain details of the plot in heroic hexameters.

2. Virtual Character Interviews:

Ask the students to create interviews with famous epic characters (e.g., Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas). Using ChatGPT, students can pose different questions to these characters and receive responses as if the characters were actually answering.

When assigning the task, it is worth referring to the epics covered in the seminar. The task might also include selecting the interview subject from the epics being read. Multiple students can be given the same task simultaneously – they can then discuss the quality of the questions posed and the fictional responses.

The task involves getting to know the chosen epic character in greater detail; creating a characterization and journalistic processing of a character is impossible without knowing the interactions with other characters and the entire plot. Processing the original text from this perspective also encourages more in-depth and focused reading or re-reading by the students.

3. Situational Games:

Create various scenarios from the epic worlds where students must solve emerging problems in groups. Using ChatGPT, you can recreate certain scenes from the stories, allowing students to decide the characters' next steps.

Situational games are suitable for preparing the development of epic dialogues. Students can discuss and act out what the planned epic narrative's dialogues will be about, what problems the characters involved in the dialogues have at a given point in the narrative, and what they will discuss with their conversational partners in that situation. Special emphasis can be placed on monologues characteristic of later, more dramatized epic types.

Existing epic dialogues can also be acted out with the full knowledge of the narrative – based on the arising elements not present in the original dialogue, it can be discussed why the epic poet chose to include specific thematic elements in the epic. This part of the task can shed light on the contemporary conditions of the epic's creation, genre constraints, and preferences.

4. Epic Quiz Contest

Organize quiz games where students compete with each other in their knowledge of epics. You can generate the questions with the help of ChatGPT and receive the answers interactively in real-time.

We will implement the competition in two areas: the content of the text to be read and the literary histories related to the text.

For the first topic, I uploaded Book 1 of Homer's Odyssey in a format accessible to ChatGPT (copying from HTML to TXT format) as an experiment, and then applied the following prompts:

1. The uploaded text is the first book of Homer's Odyssey. Please read the text carefully, then I will ask questions.

2. Please create a 15-question multiple-choice quiz based on the text. Provide 3 answer options for each question.

Students acquire the background knowledge of literary history from the modern edition of ancient Greek literary history published by the ELTE Eötvös József Collegium. The title of the PDF publication is: Introduction to the History of Ancient Greek Literature. Edited by István Kapitánffy and Tibor Szepessy. ELTE Eötvös József Collegium, 2013. I uploaded the text of the chapter on Homer from the book in TXT format to ChatGPT, then asked it to create a multiple-choice test. The prompt was as follows:

1. I have uploaded a literary history text about Homer. Please read it carefully, and then I will ask questions.

2. Please create a 20-question multiple-choice test for university students based on the chapter text. Provide 3 answer options for each question. At the end of the test, include an answer key.

The test is suitable for individual and group assessments, including competitive or other evaluative knowledge checks. At the end of the multiple-choice test, there is an opportunity to discuss incorrect answers provided by the students, as well as to explore why each given answer option is true or not. Of course, the instructor must always check the tests, and there is also the opportunity to provide more relevant incorrect answers in a multiple-choice test if we are not satisfied with the options.

The following method is suitable not only for examining content-related aspects but also for analyzing literary techniques. The description provided by the AI is as follows:

5. Analytical Discussions:

With ChatGPT, you can expand discussions on the themes, characters, and literary techniques of the epics. Ask students what they think about the decisions of various characters, and use ChatGPT to present different perspectives.

The aspects provided by AI can be expanded and varied as desired. Here, we can address questions related to the entire structure of the epic, the positioning of various themes, their proportions and modes of treatment, and the tools used to achieve artistic effects.

Exploring the literary material in question as a group project can be a very useful and inspiring task. For example, if we ask which epics are known to have been created from the time of Homer to the 1st century AD, the process of uncovering this information makes the list of those ancient epics more engaging and memorable. During this exploration, students also discover how many poems and what types were lost, and we can inquire about the reasons for these losses and supplement or correct the answers. The revelation of the complete, existing, and lost epic material serves multiple purposes:

1) It develops research skills, including the ability to use libraries and other databases;

2) During the work, one can compare the amount of texts still available today with those that have been lost, uncover the themes of the lost epics, and explore the knowledge available about them;

3) Last but not least, a list of the epics that are still readable today is created, along with the problem of which ones are even available in translation, meaning the students do not receive the material to be processed ready-made, but instead gain insight into the material during its collection. During the project work, they should also appropriately consult relevant literary history works.

A project can also effectively take the form of uncovering the chronology of epic literature. The AI's suggestion for this is as follows:

6. Community Projects:

 Give students the opportunity to create community projects such as a digital collection of epics or an interactive timeline of events in epics. ChatGPT can assist in gathering and organizing information.

Creating a digital collection of epics is an excellent task, as university students appreciate having resources available online that they can read from digital devices. However, while collecting these, they also face the reality of how much material is still accessible only in analog form, meaning through acquiring physical books.

When creating a timeline, students gain insight into the temporal distribution of the origins of epic poetry. With the help of instructors, they can pose questions and then receive answers based on their own research about the reasons for changes in the context of historical shifts. This process not only enhances their understanding of the subject but also sharpens their research and analytical skills.

The sample processing proceeded as follows. After uploading the aforementioned Ancient Greek literary history in txt format, I used the following prompts:

1. prompt: I'm uploading a text file of Ancient Greek literary history. Please read it thoroughly, then I will ask questions.

2. prompt: Please extract the titles of the epics, their dates of origin, and information about the authors from the text. Work only from the uploaded document.

I then performed further detailing in outline form with the following prompt:

Please repeat the previous prompt in more detail. Expand on the items provided earlier with a brief description of the content of each epic where possible.

After extracting and verifying the information, the next step is to create a clear timeline diagram that will serve as the basis for further discussion.

Now create an illustrative timeline of the chronological order of the listed epics.

Based on the request, the following diagram has been created:

The presented methods were intended to serve as starting points for developing the educational program of university seminar sessions. I emphasize the word "starting point" in this context because the more we understand the possibilities offered by AI, the more it can assist us in developing new ideas. Finally, as this summary perhaps illustrates, the use of AI can provide effective techniques for acquiring, verifying, and expanding knowledge. However, it can never replace one thing: the primary experience of literary works through thoughtful reading.