ENGL 3120    ※   Digital Writing & Publishing   ※    George Pullman





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Assignments

This class is front-end loaded. Most of the assignments happen in the first nine weeks, but 40% of the final grade is determined by what you accomplish between Week 9 and week 15, your final portfolio, your HELLO WORLD moment. You need to get started right away and stay focused. You can't do all this in the last week of class. I will start grading each week's work Saturday morning. There are 28 students in this class, so it may take me to Monday to finish.

In what follows, when I offer examples, I use technical writing as the context because I am a rhetoric prof, this class is in the Rhetcomp division of English, and the most practical application of Rhetcomp is technical writing. Regardless of what field you are pursuing, you should create your own AI-assisted information. My examples are just examples no matter how relevant they might be to you.

It is a good idea to read each week's assignment before you do anything else. Just read. Don't click. Just read. Then start doing. You might want to keep a todo list for each week. Weeks 5, 6, 7 and 8 will likely require the greatest discipline and concentration. But week 9 gives you a chance to catch up and then if worse comes to worse, you sill have spring break to fix whatever is broken. DON'T PUT ANYTHING OFF. Seriously, you will hate yourself (and me).

Week 03 - Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) As a Career Coach DUE 5 pm, 01/26

Monica's advice about designing a prompt

You are going to use AI to help you learn about, prepare for, and build your career-launching portfolio. AIs can be powerful assistants, but they can also be misleading and they can lull a person into a false sense of knowledge, so think before you copy, paste, and edit. Look for confirmation from other sources -- friends, mentors, publications, organizations. Some sources of information are really just fronts for sales, marketing masquerading as information. Be careful.

Read Anatomy of an AI Prompt

If you want more details, read Prompt Engineering Guide

Here are links to the most prevalent AI text generators. Try them out. See if one appeals to you more than the others. It's not a bad idea to try the same prompt in more than one, to see how they differ, but your goal is to assemble the most good information you can, not choose a favorite AI (although you might).

There is also a browser plugin called Monica that you might find helpful. MS's Edge has Copilot built in now. See Tools for more.

For this week's assignment, you need to design and try out a few prompts. Start with something like the following prompt:

I am about to graduate from college with a degree in _____. I want to find an entry level position [be more specific if you can be, what position specifically?] in the __________ industry [again, be specific]. What skills do I need to demonstrate? What kinds of artifacts should I have to show I have those skills? What are some resources that I should pursue to help me learn about what I need to do to find my first industry [specify] job?

You may need to tweak this prompt to get useful results. You may want to follow-up with subsequent questions.

    You might want to ask, for example
  1. How can I gain real-world experience in my chosen field?
  2. What national organization does my field have?
  3. What networking opportunities does my industry offer?
  4. How do make the best use of LinkedIn?
    You might want to read LinkedIn: How to get an entry level job
  5. What other questions can you think of? (Answering relevant questions I didn't think to ask elevates your grade)

    6. Synthesize what the AIs tell you.

    Then give your synthesis to one of those AIs and ask it to make editorial suggestions. Then ask it to suggest ideas you haven't yet included.

    Edit and post your synthesis. Write a paragraph about what additional suggests the AI offered. Then write a few paragraphs answering the following questions:

    1. What did you already know?
    2. What did you learn?
    3. What do you need to do/learn next?
    4. How are you feeling about all this at this point?
    5. What else do you want to say?

    Grades are awarded for thoroughness (leave no reasonable question unanswered), specificity (be concrete; don't say "dog", say what kind of dog), and clarity (don't make your readers interpret what you have written; don't assume what you've said makes sense. Write the way you know your audience will read).

    GRADE:5%