Author: hedrickacadtech

Creating a Custom GPT: It’s Easier Than You Think

hedrickacadtech Uncategorized

James Faulkner – September 13, 2024

Working on a literature review? Want to make your documents, presentations, and spreadsheets smart searchable? Want to offer students a better FAQ experience with important documents (e.g., course syllabus, Endicott policies)? Increasingly, foundation models (OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, etc.) have offered services that allow you to “chat with your data,” an ability once confined to code-based approaches employing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Let’s take a look at some of the more accessible options available now.

NB: But first, as with any third-party tool, you want to make sure student data is de-identified, or better yet excluded altogether, from any file uploads.

Typically, you will begin by creating a knowledge base of relevant files that you would like the LLM to know well. You may include “system instructions” that tell the LLM how to handle your data sources and how to interact with the user. You may have heard of OpenAI’s custom GPTs—recently made free to view, though not to create—but now there are a number of options available.

Watch this video to see how I used Google’s NotebookLM to create a custom GPT.

  • Custom GPTs (OpenAI)
    • Requires GPTPlus subscription to create; any user with a free OpenAI account may use a custom GPT, however
  • Notebook LM (Google)
    • Free
    • Currently under development, so only accessible by personal Gmail account
    • Ability to invite (like a Google doc)
    • Google’s Gemini LLM excels at searching long documents
  • HuggingFace Assistants
    • Free
    • Easily shareable; often no login is required of the user
    • Cannot take files directly, but can search over (scrape) websites that contain relevant information
    • Option to select more efficient (lower-carbon footprint) LLM models, e.g., Microsoft’s Phi-3
  • Claude Projects (Anthropic)
    • Requires Claude Pro subscription
    • Not easily shareable

Using Blackboard Ally in Canvas to make your course more accessible

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Blackboard Ally accessibility reporting is now available in all Canvas courses. You may have noticed the small icons Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 10.49.41 AM  that look like fuel gauges next to files that you have uploaded into your course.

To learn what those icons mean and how you can use the accessibility reports to improve your course, watch the short video below.

Faculty Assembly Powerpoint 11/19/19Download

Try out our new Google Jamboard!

hedrickacadtech classroom technology, collaboration, Google

Academic Technology has recently acquired a Google Jamboard that faculty are welcome to try with students. A Jamboard is basically a giant touchscreen whiteboard on wheels. Jamboard’s main function is collaborative brainstorming. The built-in app throws together handwriting recognition, shape recognition, freeform sketching, photos, clippings and group-created post-it-style ideas into a live workspace.

The Jamboard app can be simultaneously used by students on their laptops or phones so everyone in class can contribute even if they aren’t standing at the board. And since it’s part of G Suite, all files are saved to Drive and can be shared with collaborators.

Google offered the Jamboard to Endicott for a very low price (less than 20% of the retail cost) because it wants to see how higher ed faculty use the new device in order to develop some case studies. So please contact Hedrick at hellis@endicott.edu to schedule a quick demo and to see if you might want to try it with your students.