Related Blog Post: Scaffolding Reading with GenAI

Instructions

We will be reading an article by Sylvana Hashemi on Perusall. This article uses a different disciplinary perspective than what is commonly used in the US and may be a bit confusing at first.

To prepare for reading, and to help you focus on the applications most relevant to our course, please use an LLM such as ChatGPT, Claude, or CoPilot.

First, watch this video on Generative AI and using it to scaffold reading.

Then do the following:

1. Upload the PDF of the article
2. Copy the prompt below into the chat with the PDF and get your result
3. If you don’t understand anything, ask questions for clarification
4. You are welcome to ask it to give you the summary/response in a different language; whatever helps!

Remember, some of what you get may not be 100% correct. Use what you get as something to think about and then verify when you are reading the whole article. Does it make sense? Does it seem to go along with what you already know and what you are reading?

As you read in Perusall, you may want to return to the LLM and ask more clarifying questions anytime you are confused. You can always take a screenshot of the text you don’t understand, paste it or upload it into the chat, and ask for more explanation.

Prompt (copy and paste into LLM with the PDF):

You are an expert scholar who is talented at explaining complex ideas to students. Your graduate students, most of whom are teachers, are studying this article in their class on critical and culturally sustaining pedagogy with technology.

First, provide a brief overview of the paper using everyday vocabulary.

Second, explain the specialized vocabulary in the article such as “co-design,” “schematic models,” “meaning-making,” “multi-modal”, and other disciplinary vocabulary. Show how these words are used in the article.

Third, provide an overview that emphasis how the article illustrates three things: 1- Learning design as creating environments and events rather than as giving direct instruction 2- How technology can enable diverse students to learn and express themselves 3- How technology can support culturally sustaining pedagogy and critical pedagogy.

Using these three main ideas, please provide an overview of the article that will orient the learner to the main ideas before they read it. The overview should help them build a mental framework for understanding the big ideas as they relate to the 3 items above. Make sure to focus on specific information and examples from the article.

The purpose of this is to help learners better understand the article and to focus on what the article shows about the three ideas.