Leveraging AI to Create or Adapt OER
Two challenges that OER development, adaptation, and maintenance/updating present are the time and resources these processes take. To mitigate these challenges, AI’s ability to support the creation and updating of new works can be applied to OER – with the caveat that licensing may have particular complications and considerations. See Lesson 6 for more information on navigating that.
Ways to use generative AI to create and adapt OER include:
- Grammar and style checking
- Accessibility improvement (e.g., alt text generation and language simplification)
- Content organization (e.g., automated outlining and topic clustering)
- Conversion to other languages and formats (e.g., translation and creation of audio)
- Data analysis and visualization (e.g., statistical analysis and chart generation)
OpenStax offers MathGPT integration with their textbooks to provide AI-based tutoring, and they recently completed a pilot to test an AI-powered Economics Chatbot, Staxly. OpenStax is evaluating Staxly’s potential for further development and expansion.
Additional potential use cases are included below, along with some examples and AI platform recommendations.
Update Existing OER Content
Adam Croom, Assistant Professor at Gaylord College and Director of the Office of Digital Learning at the University of Oklahoma, describes his process for using AI to update an OER for his Introduction to Advertising course in Updating an OER Textbook via AI and ChatGPT.
Prompt example: Rewrite this chapter to make it more up-to-date with the changes to the [advertising] industry that have taken place between [dates]. Every time that you rewrite a section, include some notes on what changes you made.
Create “Generative Textbooks”
In his blog opencontent.org, David Wiley of Lumen Learning has described what he calls “generative textbooks,” essentially a list of prompts for students to use with a chatbot to learn about a specific topic and ask the bot to ask them formative questions about the material after they read about it.
In addition, customized chatbots offer a different way to do this. Instead of providing students with prompts, you can provide a chatbot with customized knowledge and instructions to allow for more oversight into what students may get. This is something OER textbook authors have been experimenting with as the companies Poe.com and OpenAI rolled out functionality that supports it in Fall 2023. With these technologies, you can upload an OER textbook as context for a chatbot so that it draws on that text.
However, a concern is that the tutor bot may get something wrong or misrepresent the textbook. It may also fail to quote from the textbook appropriately when using the exact words from the text. Still, these technologies likely are being improved as you read this!
Create Summaries of Content
You can use tools like ChatGPT to condense information and create concise beginning or end of chapter/section summaries, or to expand