In the previous issue, we covered OpenAI’s ChatGPT guide for students. This week, OpenAI’s push on education continued, this time for the company’s focus on teachers instead.
The company partnered with Wharton Business School to release an online course on Coursera taught by
Ethan Mollick. The course is titled
AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching and
free to enroll if you are interested.
Preparing organizational documents in the AI era
This week I would like to talk about something that is relevant not only for our teachers and researchers, but also for our administrators: Rethinking our document preparation strategy. we’re not just writing for human readers anymore – we’re creating resources that will increasingly be processed, analyzed, and repurposed by AI tools. For example, many of us are considering creating an AI chatbot for their course trained on the course syllabus, which requires sharing documents with AI tools. This shift from human-readable to machine-readable documents demands a fresh approach to document creation.
What is wrong with the traditional document formats that we use? Think about how we usually create documents in Word or Google Docs. We make them look nice by:
- Adding different fonts and colors
- Adjusting spacing and margins
- Including tables and images
- Using various heading styles (and LU letterhead for internal documents)
While these documents look great to us, for AI tools it is like reading a messy handwriting. When we format text in different ways, AI tools struggle to understand what is important. For example, in a traditional document, a heading might be bold and large, but AI doesn’t know it’s a heading. In traditional documents, AI cannot easily tell what is a title, what is a learning objective, or what is an assignment. Traditional documents are like beautiful paintings – great to look at, but hard to reorganize or use in different ways. What we need now are documents that work more like building blocks – easy to arrange, rearrange, and use in different ways, both by humans and AI tools. There are two modern formats, Markdown and JSON, that overcome the limitations of traditional formats. Despite being more structured, JSON format is quite complex. I therefore would like to demonstrate the Markdown format.
A document in Markdown format looks like this:
# Introduction to Business Management (BUS101)
> Spring 2024 | Monday/Wednesday 10:00-11:30 | Room B201 & Online
> Instructor: Dr. Smith | Email: smith@university.edu | Office Hours: Tues 14:00-16:00
## Course Overview
This course introduces fundamental business concepts and develops basic management skills through case studies, group projects, and hands-on exercises.
### Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze different business structures and models
2. Apply basic management principles to real scenarios
3. Develop a simple business plan
4. Present business ideas professionally
—
## Schedule
### Week 1: Understanding Business Basics
#### Monday: What is a Business?
* Business definitions and purposes
* Key stakeholders
* Economic systems basics
#### Wednesday: Business Structures
* Sole proprietorship
* Partnerships
* Corporations
* Start-ups and scale-ups
**Assignment:** Business Structure Analysis (Due: Week 2 Monday)
—
## Assignments
### Individual Assignments
**Business Structure Analysis (50%)**
– Due: Week 2 Monday
– Individual written report
– 1000 words maximum
– Analysis of two business structures
**Management Case Analysis (50%)**
– Due: Week 3 Monday
– Case solution document
– Decision framework application
– Action plan development
—
## Required Materials
### Main Textbook
* “Business Fundamentals” (Smith & Johnson, 2024)
– Available in university bookstore
– Digital version acceptable
### Software & Tools
* Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
* Zoom for online sessions
—
*Last updated: November 25, 2024*
So what are the key elements in a Markdown document like that:
Header Levels (Hierarchy)
# Main Title (Level 1)
## Major Section (Level 2)
### Sub-Section (Level 3)
#### Detailed Topic (Level 4)
Blockquotes (Course Info Banner)
> Spring 2024 | Monday/Wednesday 10:00-11:30 | Room B201 & Online
This creates an indented, highlighted section
Lists
* Unordered list item (bullet points)
– Alternative bullet point
1. Numbered list item
Text Emphasis
**Bold text** for important items
*Italics* for emphasis
Section Breaks
—
Creates a horizontal line to separate major sections
Nested Information
* Main point
– Sub point
* Further detail
Shows hierarchy in lists through indentation
When we use Markdown, every part of the document has a clear purpose. Headings start with #, lists use simple bullets (*), and important text is marked with ** for bold. This simple structure means computers can easily:
Find all assignments and due dates automatically
Create calendar reminders
Generate study guides
Convert the document into websites, PDFs, or apps
Here’s a simple example: If a computer needs to find all assignments, it’s like looking for boxes labeled “Assignment” – quick and reliable. In a Word document, it would be like searching through a messy drawer hoping to find the right things.
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Of course, this kind of transformations will require additional training for staff. Yet, LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude can already help us transform our existing documents into a machine -readable format like Markdown.
