AI-Enhanced Assessment
This page is to support you with ideas and helpful resources in how to implement AI-enhanced Socratic Dialogue into your formative assessment practices.
Further discussion of the concept of AI-enhanced Socratic Dialogue can be found here.
1. Simple Prompt Template
This prompt template will help you understand the concept of how ChatGPT can guide you through a conversation about a topic. Copy/Paste this prompt into ChatGPT inserting a topic of interest:
“As an expert in the Socratic Method, assess my knowledge and understanding by asking me one question at a time about [insert topic here]. Do you understand?”
2. Prompt Template for Formative Assessment:
This prompt template can be used for a simple formative assessment activity. Insert broad topic, and if needed, specific content. Have students copy/paste into ChatGPT to participate in a Socratic Dialogue:
“Acting as an expert on the process of Socratic dialogue, please assess my knowledge and understanding of [Broad Topic].
Ask me one question at a time to measure my understanding of [specific content]. Once you are confident that you know my level of understanding, please stop the conversation and give me some productive feedback on my responses.
I am in [Year Level].
Do you understand?”
Discussion of elements of the prompt
This table explains some of the reasoning behind the “prompt crafting”. There is nothing magic about it. Once you have the basic concept of AI-enhanced Socratic Dialogue, various phrasing will give a similar result.
| Element | Discussion |
| “Acting as an expert on the process of Socratic dialogue” | This focuses the generative AI into the specific role it should take in the conversation. |
| “please assess my knowledge and understanding” | What is assessed here can be changed depending on the assessment construct being measured. “Knowledge and Understanding” is generic for the purpose of limiting the variability of the prompt. |
| “of [Broad Topic].” | This gives broad constraints of the topic being discussed. If the content is simple, this is all that is required. |
| “Ask me one question at a time to measure my understanding” | If you don’t clarify that the questions should be asked one at a time, GPT3.5 often just interprets the prompt as giving 10 questions at the beginning. This also aids the Generative AI in acting more adaptive on what questions should be asked based on individual student responses. |
| “of [specific content].” | This narrows the topic down further so the conversation is more likely focused on what content has been recently covered. |
| “Once you are confident that you know my level of understanding, please stop the conversation and give me some productive feedback on my responses.” | This is not for the purpose of the Generative AI to assess the student (that is the job of the human teacher), rather, it is a helpful way to end the conversation with the AI providing some potentially helpful feedback. |
| “I am in [Year Level].” | Theoretically, this helps the AI know the complexity of the responses to expect, thus, contributing to the feedback that is received. “I am Novice” or “I have intermediate knowledge” could also work. |
| “Do you understand?” | The act of paraphrasing the request usually keeps ChatGPT3.5 on track. Without it, the chatbot can often just produce a script of a fictional Socratic conversation between two people. |
Examples of subjects / topics
Year 10 English – Fox 8 by George Saunders
Year 7 English – Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
Year 10 History – Causes of WW2
Senior Physics – Radioactivity (this uses the idea of Viva Assessment Method)
Teacher Directed AI 