Integrating ChatGPT into Canvas as a tool to help educators

[MarkBAE]

Hi

I wondered how fellow educators/admins/designers would feel about incorporating a tool such as ChatGPT directly into Canvas, to reduce admin time and speed up process of things?

A good example could be quizzes - a GPT bot could potentially respond to an input of "create me a classic quiz on the subject of X. It should have 10 questions and graduate in difficulty" (a basic idea but gets my point across).

I think a tight integration with ChatGPT (or similar tool) is going to put the first system that does it way out in front of the rest in the education space. As we know, Microsoft are heavily invested in the EdTech space - they've thrown everything at it, it seems - and ChatGPT is going to be incorporated directly into each of their products. If anyone from Canvas/Instructure is listening, this is a plea and a piece of advice: get involved with this tool right away to futureproof your product!

Interested to hear others' thoughts 🙂

[Ron_Bowman]

@MarkBAE -

That is an interesting concept.  It would be interesting to know how difficult it would be to incorporate something like that into a system such as canvas(maybe we could ask chatGBT 😄).  The ability to Incorporate that would be nice, but I am not sure I would want to be involved with the integration.

Now if Canvas had a way where you could create a quiz by importing an external file, then I could see that possibility very easy.  The reason I bring that up is that WebCT had such a feature for some of their question formats.  You just created a text file with the appropriate markers indicating what the following text was for the question.  That file could then be uploaded to create the actual quiz.

Ron

[slwilso3]

You can import a text file to create a quiz. Look for Text to Canvas quiz and you should see a few apps that can do it. I believe Respondus can import a .txt file to a quiz, and San Diego State used to have a Text to Quiz app.

[Ron_Bowman]

@slwilso3 -

Yes I came across a post shortly after I made that post that mentioned using Respondus (however that is pay for play).  WebCT just took a text file and imported it to generate the quiz.  No other parties involved.

Ron

[slwilso3]

The San Diego one is free, which is a bonus.

[mrwnphs2]

What does that mean?  What San Diego one?  How did anyone find this to helpful?  🤔

[stacy_lambert]

HI,

Yes, we are definitely keen to look at ChatGPT integration. I have been testing it with feedback and day to day administrative tasks, I know others have been using it for power app scripts and different problem-solving tasks. I did also add some old HSC questions into ChatGPT for answers - they were at a sound level, not outstanding, but definitely worthy of deeper discussions. Interested to see where this all goes.

Thanks

Stacy

[dGillman]

Stacy,

I would like to add ChatGPT as a student in my course and let it take quizzes.

Best,

David

[darren_ponman1]

Hopefully instructure are working on incorporating GPT into speed grader comment facilities. This would be a game changer. Instead of writing an overall comment teacher could,

• click generate comment/
• review suggested feedback/
• modify as required/
• click approve.

[WilliamChandler]

I did it.  I asked chatGPT to make a me multiple choice python quiz and then I copied it into a text file.  

I used this site.  https://pypi.org/project/text2qti/

It worked great.  I think there are better options than this.  I bet I can find one that connects directly to my course by api.   

I couldn't figure out how to do questions like the last one on the text below though.  The rest of the questions above work just fine.

Quiz title: 1 txt2qti

1. What is 2+3?
a) 6
b) 1
*c) 5

2. What is the result of the following expression? 4 + 5 x 3 - 7
A) 19
B) 22
C) 13
*D) 12

3. What is the output of the following code snippet?
x = 5
y = 7
print(x == y or x > y)
a) True
b) False
*c) x > y

You see I want to include code snippets like those below but this little program didn't make it clear on how to do that.

Quiz title: 1 txt2qti

1. What is 2+3?
a) 6
b) 1
*c) 5

2. What is the result of the following expression? 4 + 5 x 3 - 7
A) 19
B) 22
C) 13
*D) 12

3. What is the output of the following code snippet?
x = 5
y = 7
print(x == y or x > y)
a) True
b) False
*c) x > y

4. What is the value of x after the following code snippet is executed?
x = 10
if x < 5:
x = 0
else:
x = 1
a) 0
*b) 1
c) 5
d) 10

5. What is the result of the following expression? not (False and True)
a) True
*b) True
c) False
d) None of the above

6. What is the value of y after the following code snippet is executed?
x = 5
y = x if x > 10 else x + 10
a) 5
b) 10
c) 15
*d) 15

7. What is the output of the following code snippet?
x = 2
y = 3
print(x >= y and y < 5)
a) True
b) False
c) None
*d) False

8. What is the value of x after the following code snippet is executed?
x = 5
if x > 10:
x = x + 5
elif x > 5:
x = x + 10
else:
x = x + 15
a) 5
b) 10
c) 15
*d) 15

9. What is the output of the following code snippet?
x = 10
y = 5
print(not(x > y) or x < y)
a) True
b) False
*c) True

10. What is the value of x after the following code snippet is executed?
x = 5
y = 10
if x < y:
x = x + 1
if x > y:
x = x + 1
a) 5
b) 10
c) 11
*d) 6

[WilliamChandler]

If you indent the stuff text under the question it works great but does not put each item on its own line.  Hmmmm.  I'll keep trying.

[rupchurch]

For a course that was offered last term, I pasted the answer to a writing assignment into Chat GPT and asked it to evaluate the assignment based on a rubric and then copied the rubric for the assignment into the chat.  The response was on target and the final score provided was 41/50 when compared against the 44/50 that the Instructor gave.  This opens up a lot questions in my mind, anyone else wondering about this? I'm confident someone will figure out how to make it a seamless process and like was suggested in the initial post, whoever does it first is going to make waves.

[JWThomas]

Students, administrators, and faculty will never (at least in the near future) accept AI Bots as a replacement for human facilitators ...BUT... I'm dying to see the results of a discussion with an AI engine commenting on student posts. I think an AI TA would be a very interesting presence in a course - maybe? I would love to try it.

For what it's worth, I am using ChatGPT in the way it's been mentioned here to give feedback on essays, etc. It would be great to have direct Canvas integration, but copy/pasting into ChatGPT and back isn't a huge process, and I just make edits in SpeedGrader. The particular course I just finished grading is a college success skills course and these were career choice essays. In most cases, ChatGPT did as good or better than I could have. But with direct integration, imagine if all of this grading was already done before I even see the work, and I would just need to make quick edits and approve what's been done...!

Also, it be great if a Canvas AI agent could build a quiz based on an electronic textbook chapter [or any book] and bring the quiz directly into a course, perhaps improving on publisher-created quizzes that are often not well written. ChatGPT itself is limited to 16500 characters, so there's no way for me to test this. Perhaps Khanmigo...?

[mrwnphs2]

Here is an interesting workaround.  I asked ChatGPT if it could write a tampermonkey script to automate tasks in Canvas LMS.  Tampermonkey is a scripting language that can be used to modify or automate the behavior of a web page.  There are some good tampermonkey scripts available if you google "canvancements."   Here's a link for your convenience: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Higher-Ed-Canvas-Users/Canvancements-Canvas-Enhancements/ba-p/246...  Maybe we could come up with some more tampermonkey scripts to automate workflow in Canvas using tampermonkey?

[ChandlWM]

SkillStruck has almost fully accomplished having a chatGPT interface but it also doesn't send student data or personal information back.  It has a sort of screen.

Our district computer science teachers were just granted access to beta test it out.  I'll keep  you posted.  

I guess there is going to be  presentation on this at some point in time.

https://www.skillstruck.com/event/ai-in-k-12-education-5-3-23

[gptnederlands]

Incorporating ChatGPT directly into Canvas, especially for tasks like quiz creation, could indeed streamline administrative processes for educators. The potential for a tight integration with ChatGPT might offer Canvas a competitive edge in the evolving EdTech landscape, aligning with the trend of incorporating AI tools into educational platforms. It's a forward-thinking approach that could enhance user experience and efficiency in educational settings.