Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas

Knowledge creation in education is a critical practice for advancing collective knowledge and fostering innovation within a student community. Students play vital roles in identifying gaps and collaborative work to improve community ideas from discourse, but idea quality can be suboptimal, affected...

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Main Authors: Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee, Chew Lee Teo, Seng Chee Tan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-08-01
Series:AI
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2673-2688/5/3/69
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author Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee
Chew Lee Teo
Seng Chee Tan
author_facet Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee
Chew Lee Teo
Seng Chee Tan
author_sort Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee
collection DOAJ
description Knowledge creation in education is a critical practice for advancing collective knowledge and fostering innovation within a student community. Students play vital roles in identifying gaps and collaborative work to improve community ideas from discourse, but idea quality can be suboptimal, affected by a lack of resources or diversity of ideas. The use of generative Artificial Intelligence and large language models (LLMs) in education has allowed work on idea-centric discussions to advance in ways that were previously unfeasible. However, the use of LLMs requires specific skill sets in prompt engineering, relevant to the in-context technique known as Chain-of-Thought (CoT) for generating and supporting improvable ideas in student discourse. A total of 721 discourse turns consisting of 272 relevant question–answer pairs and 149 threads of student discourse data were collected from 31 students during a two-day student Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS). Student responses were augmented using the CoT approach and the LLM-generated responses were compared with students’ original responses. Findings are illustrated using two threads to show that CoT-augmented inputs for the LLMs can generate responses that support improvable ideas in the context of knowledge creation. This study presents work from authentic student discourse and has implications for research and classroom practice.
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spelling doaj-art-ca717d919bed411ab838cd9c7a07ccda2025-08-20T01:56:04ZengMDPI AGAI2673-26882024-08-01531446146110.3390/ai5030069Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable IdeasAlwyn Vwen Yen Lee0Chew Lee Teo1Seng Chee Tan2National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637616, SingaporeNational Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637616, SingaporeNational Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637616, SingaporeKnowledge creation in education is a critical practice for advancing collective knowledge and fostering innovation within a student community. Students play vital roles in identifying gaps and collaborative work to improve community ideas from discourse, but idea quality can be suboptimal, affected by a lack of resources or diversity of ideas. The use of generative Artificial Intelligence and large language models (LLMs) in education has allowed work on idea-centric discussions to advance in ways that were previously unfeasible. However, the use of LLMs requires specific skill sets in prompt engineering, relevant to the in-context technique known as Chain-of-Thought (CoT) for generating and supporting improvable ideas in student discourse. A total of 721 discourse turns consisting of 272 relevant question–answer pairs and 149 threads of student discourse data were collected from 31 students during a two-day student Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS). Student responses were augmented using the CoT approach and the LLM-generated responses were compared with students’ original responses. Findings are illustrated using two threads to show that CoT-augmented inputs for the LLMs can generate responses that support improvable ideas in the context of knowledge creation. This study presents work from authentic student discourse and has implications for research and classroom practice.https://www.mdpi.com/2673-2688/5/3/69prompt engineeringknowledge creationknowledge buildingchain-of-thoughtlarge language models
spellingShingle Alwyn Vwen Yen Lee
Chew Lee Teo
Seng Chee Tan
Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
AI
prompt engineering
knowledge creation
knowledge building
chain-of-thought
large language models
title Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
title_full Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
title_fullStr Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
title_full_unstemmed Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
title_short Prompt Engineering for Knowledge Creation: Using Chain-of-Thought to Support Students’ Improvable Ideas
title_sort prompt engineering for knowledge creation using chain of thought to support students improvable ideas
topic prompt engineering
knowledge creation
knowledge building
chain-of-thought
large language models
url https://www.mdpi.com/2673-2688/5/3/69
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AT sengcheetan promptengineeringforknowledgecreationusingchainofthoughttosupportstudentsimprovableideas