How Chatbots Fit with Comp/Rhet

Teaching my students how to prompt engineer and still making sure I'm covering my content has been challenging (to say the least). The first time I taught my co-req students how chatbots go hand-in-hand with learning how rhetoric works, it felt like I was back in my first year of teaching. When class ended after the first introduction, I definitely didn't feel confident they had gotten the best instruction on chatbots or on rhetoric.

So, as many of us do, I decided I needed to rework and reteach the lesson again, and I did. Two more times. Then, just for good measure, I followed the lesson up by re-applying the rhetorical situation to a completely new situation and creating two completely new prompts for the bots. (Next week, I plan on hitting both portions again, but this time letting the students pair up.) Still, I always want to keep improving.

As luck would have it, today one of my favorite (and most gracious) comp/rhet colleagues allowed me to retry my newly revamped introduction to rhetoric and chatbots. Below are the two videos she was kind enough to record to I could share with anyone who might be interested.

Part 1 shows how chatbots can help us (students and instructors alike) to avoid being manipulated in situations where rhetoric is high. One of the students in the class had recently bought a vehicle so we ended up using the situation many of us have found ourselves in at car dealerships (i.e. having no clue whether we are getting a good deal or we are being scammed out of our wallets).

We used the SPACECAT (which I love) acronym to break down the components of the rhetorical moves on both the side of the customer and the salesman, then we moved to how the chatbot has the ability to help with any part of the situation (gaining more information to further either Speakers Purpose, learning more about the Audience, etc.).

The second video is more rhetoric based than chatbot based but the game they played afterwards was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I was not very good at pacing and never got the chance to record Round 4 (which was going to be the best). (In my co-req courses I have an extended timeframe so we were able to use ChatGPT to frame our first prompt and gave it the role of the salesman, then moved to Claude and assigned it the role of the customer. When we generated both and compared the two, they were amazed. But I digress.)

Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy seeing and hearing how much fun we were ALL having learning about chatbots and rhetoric. My goal for this post is to level with all instructors: I know it is incredibly intimidating to think about having to teach ethical AI use along with your subject matter but there is immense value in considering it.

At the very least, if students are being taught how chatbots can expand their understanding of difference, it is worth teaching.

More to come soon!