Highlights from OpenAI on Campus: 5 Takeaways 

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OpenAI was on campus earlier this week to run some training sessions for both staff and faculty about how to effectively use ChatGPT in your workflow. Sessions covered everything from prompt engineering to effectively using the various tools accessible through our Cedarville workspace. We’ve got a quick recap of the biggest takeaways from the sessions, so let’s dive right in.  

Set up your personalization/memories settings  

This is super simple to set up! When logged in to ChatGPT, click on your name in the bottom left corner, then click “Personalization.” From there, you can enable customization, set the style and tone ChatGPT uses when responding, add custom instructions (like additional style and tone instructions or default behaviors), and add information about yourself that you want it to reference as it completes prompts.  

There’s a little bit of wonkiness with memories that’s being sorted out – but once it is, you’ll be able to review any “memories” (information ChatGPT’s decided is important to log and use in future chats) and choose whether to keep or delete them.  

Know the anatomy of a good prompt 

It may seem easy to use ChatGPT – and it is! But there are a few things you need to consider when writing prompts to give it. A good prompt has four different elements:  

1. task – what you want ChatGPT to do 
2. context – who the output is for, what kind of style you want the response to have, any resources you want it to use 
3. output – the length of the response, the format of the response 
4. stop rule – when it should stop and what it should not do (important to help reduce “hallucinations”) 

Using all of these in a prompt will help ChatGPT to return a response that’s actually helpful to you! 

Use projects in ChatGPT 

Projects in ChatGPT function like folders in a way – they can hold multiple chats all related to a particular project – but there’s more to them than just that. With projects, you can provide specific instructions for how ChatGPT should behave in responding to your prompts and restrict it to only using the information provided in the project and not reference any of its “memories.” Once you choose this setting and create the project, the “memories” setting can’t be changed.  

But this is where the fun part begins – click the three dots in the upper right corner of the project screen and add your instructions. This is where you’ll provide the scaffolding for how you want ChatGPT to respond, what you want it to focus on, and even the kind of formatting it should use.  

Explore GPTs 

GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that are created to help with a certain task, action, or area. You can explore existing GPTs – including Cedarville-specific ones – or create your own! More information will be coming about creating and using custom GPTs in a future training session, so stay tuned for more details.  

Check out OpenAI’s training resources 

OpenAI has their own training platform (OpenAI Academy) full of videos and articles to help you learn and understand ChatGPT and how it can help you. You need to create a free account for this platform (separate from your Cedarville/ChatGPT sign on), but it’s a quick process to sign up! 

It’s time to dive in and explore ChatGPT! If you have questions, you can check out OpenAI Academy or chat with your school’s AI Fellow (more information coming soon!). More information and training sessions will be coming throughout the semester, so keep an eye out for details on those as well!  

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