Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / Double Expert: AI-Assisted Survey Development with Dr. Jordan Wheeler
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone.
- 0:01SPEAKER_00: We are recording another episode of Azadeh.
- 0:04SPEAKER_03: And Guy.
- 0:05SPEAKER_00: On AI.
- 0:06SPEAKER_03: And today we have a surprise.
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
- 0:09SPEAKER_03: And so we have Dr. Jordan Wheeler here in the studio, in the flesh.
- 0:15And he is a colleague here at UNL,
- 0:19but he's also working for Pearson Education right now.
- 0:21SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's correct.
- 0:22SPEAKER_03: So he's a man of many talents.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: Dr. Wheeler, do you want to introduce yourself?
- 0:28SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can talk a little bit about myself.
- 0:30SPEAKER_01: First, thanks for having me on.
- 0:31I'm excited to talk a little bit about Gen AI and how we use it
- 0:35in our research and
- 0:36SPEAKER_01: how we're using it in our collaboration.
- 0:39SPEAKER_01: A little bit of background for me.
- 0:41SPEAKER_01: So I went to undergrad at Nebraska Wesleyan University,
- 0:45SPEAKER_01: studied math,
- 0:47SPEAKER_01: then got into statistics for my master's.
- 0:49SPEAKER_01: And then when I was doing master's,
- 0:51I worked as a data scientist and started to realize I wanted to
- 0:55have a bigger
- 0:55SPEAKER_01: impact on the educational realm.
- 0:57SPEAKER_01: And so I started to Google
- 0:59how can I combine stats with education and stumbled upon the
- 1:02field of measurements
- 1:04SPEAKER_01: and psychometrics.
- 1:05And so I applied to different programs and got into the
- 1:07University of Georgia,
- 1:09where basically I studied different psychometric models focused
- 1:13on item response
- 1:13SPEAKER_01: theory.
- 1:14And a lot of that research focused on how we could integrate
- 1:19text analysis models,
- 1:21SPEAKER_01: topic models,
- 1:23SPEAKER_01: large language models into the measurement process.
- 1:26SPEAKER_01: And that led me to where I'm at now.
- 1:28SPEAKER_01: I've been at UNL for two and a half years.
- 1:38SPEAKER_01: for the educational and psychology.
- 1:40SPEAKER_03: For which we are very thankful because we need all the expertise,
- 1:44especially because you bring that very specific knowledge base
- 1:49around measurement
- 1:50SPEAKER_03: and especially AI,
- 1:52SPEAKER_03: which is why we have you here.
- 1:54SPEAKER_00: And Dr. Vila has also been part of our research project.
- 1:58SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the ACT-E.
- 2:00which is about exploring the use of Gen.AI for engineering and
- 2:05dissertation.
- 2:05SPEAKER_00: Do you like to talk about that as well?
- 2:08SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we can talk a little bit about that.
- 2:10So that started off,
- 2:11I think,
- 2:12when you were taking my survey methods course.
- 2:17SPEAKER_01: And so in that course,
- 2:18I have students develop measures to measure something that they
- 2:21want to measure.
- 2:22And so I try to tell them it should be focused maybe on
- 2:24something that they're
- 2:25SPEAKER_01: thinking about for the dissertation.
- 2:26SPEAKER_01: And so in that class, we really talk about how do we develop measures.
- 2:31SPEAKER_01: A lot of survey method courses focus on sampling,
- 2:33SPEAKER_01: and that's an important part of survey research.
- 2:36But what I've often found is that writing the items and
- 2:39creating the measures is
- 2:41SPEAKER_01: often overlooked.
- 2:43SPEAKER_01: assume that's the easiest step.
- 2:45SPEAKER_01: And to me, that's the hardest step.
- 2:47SPEAKER_01: What are you wanting to measure?
- 2:48SPEAKER_01: How do you define it?
- 2:50SPEAKER_01: What does it look like to be high and low on that construct?
- 2:53SPEAKER_01: And then how do you get items that elicit that construct?
- 2:55And so that course really focused on the item development
- 2:59process and how we can
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: actually create measures.
- 3:01And so Azadeh took that course and wanted to kind of focus a
- 3:08little bit on how
- 3:10SPEAKER_01: faculty members are using Gen AI
- 3:13SPEAKER_01: in the classroom and their teaching and whatnot.
- 3:16SPEAKER_00: Very true, in the College of Engineering.
- 3:18SPEAKER_01: Yes, focused in the College of Engineering.
- 3:21And so we started to work a little bit together on the item
- 3:25development process.
- 3:26And when the semester ended,
- 3:28I think you reached out to me and asked if I wanted to
- 3:31continue.
- 3:32SPEAKER_01: And when a student is that eager and motivated,
- 3:36SPEAKER_01: I've always found that it's good to cultivate that.
- 3:38SPEAKER_01: And those are the people I want to be around, is people who
- 3:42SPEAKER_01: are excited about what they're doing.
- 3:44And so that's where we started,
- 3:46I guess,
- 3:47with this collaboration with Guy and then Tarek.
- 3:50SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
- 3:50and the wonderful thing about that is we started here at UNL
- 3:54and with faculty,
- 3:55SPEAKER_03: and now we're expanding in two ways.
- 3:57SPEAKER_03: We're expanding and working with students,
- 4:00SPEAKER_03: and at the same time,
- 4:01SPEAKER_03: we're expanding to other universities.
- 4:04SPEAKER_03: So this is really exciting.
- 4:06SPEAKER_03: And if you're interested and you're listening, please give us a call.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
- 4:10SPEAKER_00: It's getting more excited, yes.
- 4:12SPEAKER_00: So we have a couple of questions, Dr. Willers.
- 4:15So how did you start using generative AI for developing survey
- 4:20items or for
- 4:21SPEAKER_00: developing measures in educational psychology?
- 4:25SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good question.
- 4:27Let me take a step back and talk about how I even just started
- 4:30to use Gen.AI in my
- 4:31SPEAKER_02: day-to-day life.
- 4:33So when I was getting my master's,
- 4:36computer programming is a huge part of the statistical field.
- 4:41SPEAKER_01: Well, Gen.AI wasn't around at that point.
- 4:43SPEAKER_01: or it was in its infancy of being used.
- 4:47SPEAKER_01: And so when we were coding and we had problems, we had to go Google it.
- 4:51And we had to go on Stack Overflow and find a solution and then
- 4:55adapt it to our solution.
- 4:56And you learn how to write really good questions to Google to
- 5:00get to the Stack
- 5:01SPEAKER_01: Overflow page that you want to get to.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: And then when ChatGPT started coming around,
- 5:06SPEAKER_01: it was in,
- 5:07SPEAKER_01: I want to say,
- 5:08SPEAKER_01: the last year of my graduate program at Georgia.
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: And so I used it a lot first for coding.
- 5:14SPEAKER_01: So if I had a coding problem, I would just use that.
- 5:16SPEAKER_01: And then I started to think a little bit more about,
- 5:19SPEAKER_01: well,
- 5:20SPEAKER_01: how can we use this more in the test development process?
- 5:22And this is a huge area of research within educational
- 5:25psychological measurement is
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: how do we use these to develop measures,
- 5:28SPEAKER_01: create items,
- 5:29SPEAKER_01: those sort of things.
- 5:31SPEAKER_01: And so I just started to use it more and more,
- 5:33and I found different ways and techniques to improve the
- 5:36results I was getting.
- 5:37and so it started with um can you help me really like this is
- 5:41the contract i want
- 5:42to measure this is the theory behind it this is how i'm
- 5:45conceptualizing it this is
- 5:46how i'm operationalizing can you help me develop items to get
- 5:50at that and so
- 5:51through that process i've learned how to probe and ask better
- 5:55questions to these
- 5:55generative models um and that's where we've worked with on the
- 6:00student side of the
- 6:00SPEAKER_01: survey for yeah
- 6:04SPEAKER_03: So how do you start?
- 6:06SPEAKER_03: When you get into a new area and you're thinking about the construct,
- 6:10what are the first few steps you take as you think about where
- 6:14is generative AI
- 6:15SPEAKER_03: going to be helpful?
- 6:17It also helps our listeners if you talk a little bit about your
- 6:20prompting strategies as well.
- 6:23SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's a really good question.
- 6:25SPEAKER_01: And we can talk a little bit about our experience with the students.
- 6:29SPEAKER_01: And so we want to understand the landscape of generative AI for
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: students, undergrad students in colleges of engineering.
- 6:37SPEAKER_01: And so the first thing we want to do is interview those students, right?
- 6:41SPEAKER_01: We want to understand how are they thinking of generative
- 6:45how is it impacting their lives to be able to develop measures
- 6:48that aligns to that
- 6:49SPEAKER_01: target population.
- 6:51SPEAKER_01: And so you all started to do the cognitive interviews, right?
- 6:54You collected transcripts,
- 6:55and then you did analysis on those transcripts.
- 6:58SPEAKER_01: And you can use generative AI in that process, right?
- 7:00You can help it make better sense of the themes that are
- 7:04emerging from those transcripts.
- 7:07SPEAKER_01: And then once you have those transcripts,
- 7:08SPEAKER_01: you can start to kind of develop those themes,
- 7:11SPEAKER_01: and those themes become kind of the main pillars of your construct.
- 7:14SPEAKER_01: And so from those transcripts,
- 7:17you get a better understanding of how students are thinking
- 7:19about the construct.
- 7:20SPEAKER_01: And so in our case,
- 7:21we had students thinking about their perceptions of how other
- 7:25students and peers
- 7:25SPEAKER_01: are using it,
- 7:26SPEAKER_01: how their faculty members are using it,
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: their perceived impacts on their own learning.
- 7:31SPEAKER_01: We saw that there were some concerns about generative AM.
- 7:35SPEAKER_01: Challenges, yes.
- 7:36SPEAKER_01: Challenges, right?
- 7:37SPEAKER_01: And so these themes emerge,
- 7:39and that starts to constitute the landscape of generative AI
- 7:45and how students are
- 7:46SPEAKER_01: thinking about that,
- 7:47SPEAKER_01: especially in undergrad colleges of engineering.
- 7:52SPEAKER_03: And I think that what I'm hearing you saying,
- 7:55SPEAKER_03: connecting it to what you said before,
- 7:58this is really the heart of if you don't define your constructs
- 8:03really carefully,
- 8:04SPEAKER_03: it's going to be messy.
- 8:05And that's a messiness that's really hard to get out of on the
- 8:09statistical side,
- 8:10right?
- 8:10SPEAKER_03: We can't clean up bad questions.
- 8:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
- 8:14SPEAKER_01: And so in the development process,
- 8:17SPEAKER_01: right,
- 8:17SPEAKER_01: if you go and you don't have good measures,
- 8:19SPEAKER_01: you don't really think about how...
- 8:21SPEAKER_01: how you define them,
- 8:22SPEAKER_01: how you conceptualize them,
- 8:23SPEAKER_01: how you ground them in theory,
- 8:25SPEAKER_01: how you operationalize them,
- 8:26SPEAKER_01: and you just write items,
- 8:27SPEAKER_01: and you think that they're getting at it,
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: but you don't do the front-end work of it,
- 8:32SPEAKER_01: you go and collect data,
- 8:33SPEAKER_01: and then you realize these items are terrible,
- 8:35SPEAKER_01: and you just wasted money,
- 8:37SPEAKER_01: typically it's pretty expensive to,
- 8:39SPEAKER_01: get people to respond to surveys.
- 8:41You often have to offer some sort of incentive to get them to
- 8:47respond and whatnot.
- 8:48And so if you spend all that money to do that and you collect
- 8:51it and it's garbage,
- 8:53SPEAKER_01: then you have to go back and you're going to have to collect data again,
- 8:55SPEAKER_01: and now you're basically
- 8:57SPEAKER_01: doubling the cost of collecting that data.
- 8:59And part of it can be counted in actual money if you're paying
- 9:04them or you're
- 9:05SPEAKER_03: giving them donuts,
- 9:06SPEAKER_03: which I often do,
- 9:07SPEAKER_03: or whatever it is.
- 9:08SPEAKER_03: Especially with students, it gets cheap.
- 9:10SPEAKER_03: A slice of pizza would get you a long way.
- 9:12SPEAKER_03: But it's also your time.
- 9:15And your time is super valuable because if you're a graduate
- 9:17student or if you're a
- 9:19SPEAKER_03: faculty member and you need to publish,
- 9:22SPEAKER_03: missing on a semester is a huge cost in time.
- 9:26SPEAKER_03: So even if you have money,
- 9:28SPEAKER_03: let's say,
- 9:28SPEAKER_03: you're still spending time that you're never going to get back.
- 9:34And so thinking about what are the things I can do a priori so
- 9:39when I go and
- 9:40SPEAKER_03: collect robust data,
- 9:41SPEAKER_03: it'll come out in a positive way is critically important.
- 9:46SPEAKER_01: In that first step, what is the purpose of developing the measure?
- 9:51SPEAKER_01: If there is no purpose, then you don't need to be developing it, right?
- 9:55SPEAKER_01: What is your target population?
- 9:58SPEAKER_01: What are the constructs?
- 10:00SPEAKER_01: How do those manifest in your target population?
- 10:03SPEAKER_01: How do you define them?
- 10:05SPEAKER_01: If you get all of those things really well-defined at the beginning,
- 10:09SPEAKER_01: writing items become a lot easier.
- 10:11And then you're setting yourself up for success on the back end
- 10:14when you go and collect data.
- 10:16SPEAKER_01: You could be less worried about problematic items.
- 10:18SPEAKER_01: You're still going to have problematic items.
- 10:20SPEAKER_01: You're still going to have error.
- 10:22SPEAKER_01: You're never going to measure anything without error.
- 10:24And but the point of really defining these things at the
- 10:27beginning is to reduce
- 10:28SPEAKER_01: that error on the back end.
- 10:30SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to go back and do it and waste time and resources.
- 10:35SPEAKER_03: And especially if you're a graduate student.
- 10:37And the reason I'm saying that is because as graduate students,
- 10:40you have less time.
- 10:41But more than that,
- 10:42you will never have a huge sample that can overcome extra
- 10:46error.
- 10:47SPEAKER_03: And so you're going to be collecting,
- 10:50SPEAKER_03: you know,
- 10:50SPEAKER_03: if you're lucky,
- 10:51SPEAKER_03: 100 and something or so,
- 10:53SPEAKER_03: because that's the capacity of a graduate student.
- 10:55SPEAKER_03: No offense.
- 10:57SPEAKER_02: It's the reality.
- 10:58SPEAKER_03: It's the reality.
- 10:59SPEAKER_03: And you're not going to have,
- 11:01SPEAKER_03: you know,
- 11:02SPEAKER_03: $500,000 to conduct research and pay people and all of that.
- 11:06SPEAKER_03: And so it's even more important to get as clean a measure as you can.
- 11:12So you will get the most out of that smaller sample of 100,
- 11:15150,
- 11:15whatever you can get to.
- 11:18SPEAKER_03: which is challenging.
- 11:19SPEAKER_03: It's still challenging.
- 11:23SPEAKER_03: What are the advantages you see to using AI in the development process?
- 11:29Let me take a step back and talk just briefly about the
- 11:32prompting that I do to
- 11:33SPEAKER_01: develop the items with the constructs.
- 11:37Generally,
- 11:38when I use generative models to create items,
- 11:42I want to first let them know
- 11:44SPEAKER_01: hey, I'm measuring this construct in this target population.
- 11:47SPEAKER_01: This is how I'm defining this construct.
- 11:50SPEAKER_01: I have a really strong definition of what that construct looks like.
- 11:54These are maybe the different subdomains within or the
- 11:57different domains within in
- 11:59SPEAKER_01: that construct and the pillars of that construct.
- 12:01And then how do I operationalize the construct as a whole and
- 12:04then all of the
- 12:05SPEAKER_01: subscales within it?
- 12:07SPEAKER_01: So what does it look like for people to be low, to have a small amount
- 12:13SPEAKER_01: high or have a large amount of that construct.
- 12:16That helps the generative models write items so that when they
- 12:20have a Likert scale
- 12:21SPEAKER_01: to them,
- 12:22the lower end of that Likert scale aligns with the lower end of
- 12:25how you define and
- 12:26SPEAKER_01: operationalize your construct,
- 12:28and the higher end of that Likert scale aligns with how you
- 12:31operationalize the
- 12:33SPEAKER_01: upper end of your construct.
- 12:35SPEAKER_01: When you prompt it and you give it as much information as possible,
- 12:38SPEAKER_01: I start to see that it produces better items.
- 12:41SPEAKER_01: You're still going to have to be tweaking to those items.
- 12:44SPEAKER_01: You still have to modify them, change them.
- 12:49You never just want to take the output of a generative model
- 12:51and just copy-paste it.
- 12:52SPEAKER_01: You want to think through it.
- 12:54That's one of my concerns with generative AI is the blind just
- 12:59accepting what it's
- 13:00SPEAKER_01: outputting without critically thinking about what it's producing.
- 13:04SPEAKER_03: And I find that sometimes it's easier
- 13:08because you're not the author to be the editor and the person
- 13:12who's critiquing
- 13:13SPEAKER_03: because when you're creating the items,
- 13:15SPEAKER_03: you need to create some kind of distance.
- 13:17SPEAKER_03: And one of the ways to do that,
- 13:18SPEAKER_03: of course,
- 13:19is to just let it go for a while and then revisit it and it
- 13:23looks a little bit
- 13:24SPEAKER_03: foreign.
- 13:25SPEAKER_03: But that means more time.
- 13:27SPEAKER_03: Whereas if AI creates the items,
- 13:30SPEAKER_03: we can then be the editors and say,
- 13:32SPEAKER_03: that's not what we meant or that's not what we saw in the interviews.
- 13:37So you still need to read the interviews,
- 13:39conduct the interviews,
- 13:40all of these things.
- 13:41SPEAKER_03: You can't avoid it.
- 13:42SPEAKER_03: But yes, it is that extra step.
- 13:46SPEAKER_03: You cannot skip it.
- 13:47SPEAKER_03: You cannot cut and paste.
- 13:49SPEAKER_03: It's going to be a mess.
- 13:51SPEAKER_03: It's a different kind of error introduced into the data.
- 13:54SPEAKER_00: So I have a question.
- 13:56SPEAKER_00: I'm curious.
- 13:57Have you ever had this experience that Gen AI looks at a
- 14:00different perspective to
- 14:03SPEAKER_00: the construct that you are trying to develop a measure for?
- 14:06SPEAKER_00: I mean,
- 14:07SPEAKER_00: you have some items that you develop yourself,
- 14:09SPEAKER_00: and then you ask AI with that detailed prompt that you just explained,
- 14:13and then you see AI looks at this kind of thing from a
- 14:17different perspective.
- 14:19SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that certainly can happen.
- 14:22SPEAKER_01: When I've used it for item development,
- 14:24I usually give it maybe some sample items that I created to
- 14:27kind of lead it onto
- 14:28the path that aligns with what we're seeing in the cognitive
- 14:31interviews and sort of
- 14:33the understanding of how that construct looks on the front end
- 14:38of the test
- 14:38SPEAKER_01: development or the skill development process.
- 14:42SPEAKER_01: But that certainly could happen.
- 14:43And maybe that's an interesting insight to look at when these
- 14:46things do have
- 14:47SPEAKER_01: different perspectives.
- 14:53but i think when you have a really well-defined construct that
- 14:56is grounded in the
- 14:57cognitive interviews of people from your target population
- 15:00right i think and you
- 15:02you tell generative ai models like this is how i define it
- 15:06usually i think it stays
- 15:07within those parameters of how you define it yeah give you
- 15:10items um but it's an
- 15:12iterative process right like so they'll they'll output you know
- 15:16multiple items and
- 15:17then you might say well there's this sort of like style that's
- 15:20coming off of
- 15:21of how you're writing these items i don't really like it maybe
- 15:24can you adjust those
- 15:25and address it and give it an example of a hey this item here
- 15:29that you wrote i
- 15:30don't like how you phrased it i would phrase it this way can
- 15:33you do that to the
- 15:33other items that you generated and then it's this iterative
- 15:36process of kind of
- 15:37SPEAKER_01: getting and editing to the items themselves
- 15:39SPEAKER_00: So there is also a lot of back and forth between you and AI.
- 15:44And the other thing I think we've done in our iteration of
- 15:48doing that was we had it
- 15:50SPEAKER_03: overproduce and then we could select the ones that we liked the most,
- 15:55the ones that seem to align better and not have too much
- 15:59redundancy in the items
- 16:00SPEAKER_03: because often it would say the same exact thing in three different,
- 16:05SPEAKER_03: slightly different ways.
- 16:06SPEAKER_03: And you're like, okay, I need only one or two of those.
- 16:08SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 16:09Yeah,
- 16:09and that's pretty common within skill development prior to even
- 16:12generative AI.
- 16:13You would write a whole host of items,
- 16:16and you know that some of them are going to be bad.
- 16:18SPEAKER_01: And then you would invite content experts,
- 16:20SPEAKER_01: people in the field,
- 16:21SPEAKER_01: review the items,
- 16:22and then you compare the ratings of what those experts say
- 16:25about the items.
- 16:26And you would select the best items that the raters all agreed
- 16:30were good items and
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: were getting at the construct.
- 16:33SPEAKER_01: Now we can put that before that step, right?
- 16:35So now we have kind of this double content expert approach to
- 16:39item development.
- 16:40SPEAKER_01: So first it's from the generative AI and then the actual experts.
- 16:44SPEAKER_03: And what is important to say here, we're not skipping the expert phase.
- 16:47SPEAKER_03: We're not saying the chat GPT can function as an expert on all of this.
- 16:52SPEAKER_03: We're also using...
- 16:54our partners across many institutions to give us feedback and
- 16:57to tell us which
- 16:58items are better and sometimes it's just a relative better
- 17:02there's no perfect item
- 17:03but they're definitely better items so it it doesn't take away
- 17:08steps it's just more
- 17:11maybe quicker ways to develop items but hey we're not taking
- 17:16the human out of that
- 17:17SPEAKER_03: loop at all yeah
- 17:18SPEAKER_01: I think that's an important thing to highlight.
- 17:20SPEAKER_01: We're not just, again, blindly taking what the generative models produce.
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: We're reviewing them.
- 17:26SPEAKER_01: We're having content experts review them.
- 17:28SPEAKER_01: And we're making sure that when we create our initial pilot form,
- 17:33SPEAKER_01: we have the best items,
- 17:34SPEAKER_01: at least from a content perspective,
- 17:37SPEAKER_01: going on that.
- 17:38SPEAKER_01: And then we'll collect the pilot data with it.
- 17:41SPEAKER_01: We'll do psychometric analyses.
- 17:42SPEAKER_01: And then we'll probably reduce the number of items even more after that.
- 17:46SPEAKER_01: We'll get a final scale.
- 17:49SPEAKER_03: And so just to remember,
- 17:50SPEAKER_03: if you're a graduate student,
- 17:52SPEAKER_03: the first time,
- 17:53SPEAKER_03: first of all,
- 17:53take Jordan's class before you start or an equivalent class if
- 17:57you don't have the
- 17:59SPEAKER_03: joy of being here.
- 18:00SPEAKER_03: And really learn the process before you're studying the thing itself.
- 18:07SPEAKER_03: You need to pilot this.
- 18:08SPEAKER_03: This is a process.
- 18:09SPEAKER_03: Yes.
- 18:10SPEAKER_03: And it's worth doing because you get better results at the end.
- 18:14Because you don't want to be the person who says at the end,
- 18:16well,
- 18:16I've done all of this.
- 18:17And if I would have asked better questions,
- 18:20I would have been able to say something.
- 18:23And so a little bit more development time will go a long way
- 18:27towards a quality
- 18:28SPEAKER_03: dissertation study,
- 18:29SPEAKER_03: research,
- 18:30SPEAKER_03: pilot study,
- 18:31SPEAKER_03: whatever it may be.
- 18:32SPEAKER_03: All right, last question.
- 18:35SPEAKER_03: What is your advice for graduate students or people who are starting,
- 18:39they don't necessarily have a lot of experience of working with
- 18:42generative AI,
- 18:44SPEAKER_03: and they do want to develop measures?
- 18:47SPEAKER_03: Words of advice.
- 18:48SPEAKER_03: Well,
- 18:49SPEAKER_01: I think you hit on a point I would emphasize,
- 18:51SPEAKER_01: which is learn the process before getting into generative AI.
- 18:56SPEAKER_01: Go and write the items yourself.
- 18:58SPEAKER_01: Learn, experience what that looks like, what that feels like,
- 19:02SPEAKER_01: to spend that time to struggle, right?
- 19:03SPEAKER_01: Look at a blank page and realize,
- 19:05SPEAKER_01: right,
- 19:05SPEAKER_01: I have to develop this first,
- 19:07SPEAKER_01: right,
- 19:07SPEAKER_01: and then I can edit it.
- 19:09SPEAKER_01: I think that's super important for learning.
- 19:10SPEAKER_01: And,
- 19:11SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 19:12SPEAKER_01: as a faculty member,
- 19:13SPEAKER_01: that's something I'm concerned with students right now is I want them,
- 19:19SPEAKER_01: right,
- 19:19SPEAKER_01: I want them to use Genitive AI,
- 19:20SPEAKER_01: right,
- 19:20SPEAKER_01: because it's not going anywhere.
- 19:22SPEAKER_01: They're going to be using it in their everyday life.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: But I also want them to appreciate it, right, and appreciate using it
- 19:29SPEAKER_01: in the correct manners.
- 19:30And I think the only way to do that is to actually experience
- 19:33doing the thing without that tool.
- 19:37SPEAKER_01: So it's hard when you're writing a paper,
- 19:40SPEAKER_01: you're staring at a blank page,
- 19:43SPEAKER_01: it's hard to get started.
- 19:45Once you get started and you have a draft editing,
- 19:47to me,
- 19:48that's the fun part.
- 19:48SPEAKER_01: I get to kind of tweak around.
- 19:50SPEAKER_03: I have a few papers I can give you, if that's the fun part.
- 19:54SPEAKER_03: But sure.
- 19:56SPEAKER_01: But if you're starting with generative AI outputs,
- 20:00then I worry about that a little bit because you're not
- 20:04appreciating what it's
- 20:06SPEAKER_01: producing.
- 20:08SPEAKER_01: And so I think,
- 20:09SPEAKER_01: yeah,
- 20:09SPEAKER_01: first,
- 20:09SPEAKER_01: before you even get started using it,
- 20:11SPEAKER_01: learn how to develop measures on your own.
- 20:14SPEAKER_01: Take either an intricate measurement course,
- 20:17SPEAKER_01: take a classroom assessment course,
- 20:19SPEAKER_01: take a survey methods course,
- 20:22SPEAKER_01: any test development course.
- 20:23SPEAKER_01: Take any course that's related to developing measures and scales.
- 20:28SPEAKER_01: Learn that process.
- 20:30SPEAKER_01: And then once you get that experience,
- 20:32SPEAKER_01: then start to kind of see how you might use generative AI.
- 20:35And you'll probably be much better at prompting now that you've
- 20:39grappled with this
- 20:40SPEAKER_03: for a while because you know what to ask for.
- 20:42SPEAKER_03: Otherwise,
- 20:42SPEAKER_03: it becomes this,
- 20:43SPEAKER_03: I don't know what to ask for because I'm not sure how it's constructed.
- 20:48SPEAKER_03: And then you get lousy items, let's be honest.
- 20:52SPEAKER_01: You want to play around with it.
- 20:53SPEAKER_01: So back to when I was learning to program,
- 20:57SPEAKER_01: when I first started to use Google and use Stack Overflow,
- 21:00SPEAKER_01: I'm sure the questions I asked to solve my problems were terrible.
- 21:03SPEAKER_01: right?
- 21:04But after practice with it and struggling with it,
- 21:06you learn how to ask better questions.
- 21:08SPEAKER_01: You learn to think about what do I want from a very general viewpoint,
- 21:13SPEAKER_01: not just a very specific to the problem I have,
- 21:15SPEAKER_01: but how might this be addressed in a more general sense?
- 21:19SPEAKER_01: And I think with that struggle and with that process,
- 21:21SPEAKER_01: you get a better sense of kind of how to prompt it,
- 21:25SPEAKER_01: what are the sort of things you have to focus on,
- 21:27SPEAKER_01: what are the things you have to look at on the output side of the thing,
- 21:30SPEAKER_01: and how might you
- 21:33kind of interact with it in this iterative way to get to the
- 21:37point where you have
- 21:38items that are at least good to go and for you to start editing
- 21:42and then send you a
- 21:43SPEAKER_01: content team to look at it.
- 21:46SPEAKER_03: All right.
- 21:46SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
- 21:47SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 21:47SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
- 21:48SPEAKER_03: This was lots of fun.
- 21:50SPEAKER_03: And we'll see you all next time on Azadeh.
- 21:54SPEAKER_00: And Zai.
- 21:55SPEAKER_03: On AI.