Abstract:

The rapid advance of technology has increased the demand for additional faculty training. Faculty are challenged to effectively teach students in the online classroom how to use new technologies and the various associated applications and tools, specifically those related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as Generative-AI. However, an important consideration in such training is whether such uses of AI applications in the classroom will be truly helpful versus delimiting in the education of today’s online students. While some educational institutions have developed a position on the use of Generative-AI and other AI applications in the classroom, it appears that even in the United States, many more have yet to formulate a clear direction and policies, leaving their faculties and students alike awaiting direction. Contributing to this ambivalence is the United States’ lack of a clear regulatory stance on AI use and application in the business environment. Consequently, it should be noted that best practice for use of AI by students and faculty alike in the classroom remains a “grey area” in the United States, as not all key stakeholders are in full agreement with the use of AI applications and associated technological practices. On the other hand, the European Union and United Nations have already enacted a position on the relevance and use of AI in various industries, organizations, and agencies within their own areas of authority. While technology continues to evolve and leaders and managers continue to examine, debate, and construct approaches for use of AI in their own environments, educators need to recognize that the rapid advance of technology is not standing still awaiting esoteric decisions. Educators must prepare for the next step, must keep up with the real world. Thus, the key purpose of this paper is to explore current best practices in Generative-AI in today’s business and educational worlds to create training opportunities for educators, administrators, staff, and other similarly related stakeholders, to learn more about AI and its educational uses in response to the global business environment. It should be noted that this paper must be considered a “work in progress,” as many instructional technologists, educators, computer programmers/designers, and others, are competing to produce more variety of AI tools and applications to keep up with the competition for supremacy in the information technology world. To demonstrate the rapid advancement in AI development, and its broad potential in application, for purposes of this paper, the authors will utilize as an exemplar the Generative-AI tool ChatGPT, one of the most widely used published forms of AI that many people have read about or perhaps tried. This paper will explore the current best practices seen in the literature and in social media to date that are associated with the development of the various forms of ChatGPT and offer a proposed teaching strategy as a best practice for introducing Generative-AI as a teaching tool for training online instructors and new learners. A feature of this strategy is using prompt engineering as an “advanced search tool” in a virtual AI environment. The fundamental premise of this teaching strategy is not only how to use generative AI as an effective learning activity, but to enhance the skill sets that today’s faculty bring to the online classroom.

Keywords:

Best practices, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Generative-AI, prompt engineering.