Scrutinizing the Synthetic Syllabus

Abstract

In this article I explore the scenario of syllabus creation using ChatGPT as a type of Assistant Course Designer. During the early parts of 2023, one of the scenarios for LLM-based technologies, such as ChatGPT, was the creation of course materials, assignments, and syllabi for courses. The use case presented at Teaching and Learning Conferences during this time always included an adjunct instructor who was assigned a course at the last minute; or an early career academic who might have not had previous experience in syllabus creation. The scenarios always hinged upon either a lack of time to prepare, or lack of prior work that a user could adapt to the current scenario, or both. While ChatGPT passes a surface-level inspection for this scenario, a deeper analysis of the output highlights the problems with relying on such a tool for this job.