Using Claude and Zapier Interfaces to Create Bespoke Essay Helper Bots
Giving students a specific helper bot to formatively assess their essay / exam writing will be enormously helpful to them and will save you masses of time. Here's how.
One of the major ways generative AI will help students and teachers is in formative assessment. It’s also one of its real strengths. Because it’s so rules-based, by inputting a mark scheme, then the student work, even ChatGPT-3.5 does a pretty good job at giving a grade and ideas for improvement.
The problem is creating something that students can use ‘out of the box’ without needing to do anything other than inputting their essay.
However, if you use a combination of Claude (ChatGPT will also work, but I’m quite into using Claude now I’ve worked out its strengths) and Zapier Interfaces, it’s really not that hard to create an essay/exam response assessor that is specific to whatever exam or essay students are preparing for.
Prepare the mark scheme
To start off you’ll want the mark scheme for whatever end result the students are writing. I’m choosing the AQA Macbeth exam mark scheme from 2019 to illustrate. However, to input this into Zapier Interfaces later I need the marking criteria not to be in table format (which they usually are in a exams mark scheme). This is where Claude comes in.
I copy the table mark scheme (below) from the exam paper, paste it into Claude, and give it this simple prompt: “Can you reformat this text, removing the table formatting.” It changes the table formatting into headings and body text.
I then pasted this into Google Docs and moved a couple of things around it hadn’t done perfectly - but it did a 90% job and saved a lot of time.
Create the Zapier Interface
I’ve explained a few times how to do this, but if you’re not sure here’s a quick demo.
Give the Chatbot a relevant name so it’s clear to the students what it’ll be used for. I then added this to the Greeting box: “Copy your Macbeth essay into the box below and I'll give you some ideas as to how to improve it. I'll also give you an idea about the mark you'd get.”
In the prompt placeholder box change to “Copy your essay here.”
In the Directive box, begin with a prompt like this: “You are an essay assessor bot. You will use the following marking criteria to mark the essay the user will input. Ensure you give clear, bullet pointed ideas as to strengths and give areas for improvement for all assessment objectives (AOs). At the end give the essay a grade based on the marking criteria.”
After this, paste in the mark scheme you added to Google Docs in the first step.
Test the bot
From here, you test the bot to ensure it works. To do this, go back into Claude and write a prompt like this (I just copied the question direct from the AQA 2019 question paper - I didn’t even bother to format it):
Now write a grade 5 essay to this question: “Read the following extract from Act 1 Scene 2 of Macbeth and then answer the question that follows. At this point in the play, the Captain tells Duncan about Macbeth’s part in the recent battle. 5 10 15 CAPTAIN Doubtful it stood, As two spent swimmers that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonald – Worthy to be a rebel, for to that The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him – from the Western Isles Of kerns and galloglasses is supplied, And Fortune on his damnèd quarrel smiling, Showed like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak, For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name – Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like Valour’s minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave, Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’chaps And fixed his head upon our battlements. 0 1 Starting with this speech, explore how far Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a violent character. Write about: • how Shakespeare presents Macbeth in this extract • how far Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a violent character in the play as a whole. [30 marks] AO4 [4 marks]”
Because you’ve just inputted the mark scheme it will write a response based on this scheme.
Then, go into the student version of the bot. To access the bot, click on the link top left of the Interface screen:
Once in the bot, paste in the essay and see what response it gives. You may need to move the Directive around a bit. Play with it until you get what you want.
Remember: Owing to the context window (memory) of ChatGPT-3.5, you only have around 3000 words in total for the Prompt, student essay and bot’s response. It will therefore work better for shorter essays or even sections from longer essays. Again, play around with it until you get it right. It may even be worth shortening the mark scheme text you initially input so that only the most important elements remain. Remove any wordiness.
Release into the wild
You’re then ready to release the bot to students by sharing the link highlighted above. Give them a quick demo. The nice thing is, once they have inputted their initial essay, they can keep chatting with the bot and it will keep giving suggestions to improve. Just like having the most helpful teacher beside them, holding their hand throughout.
Remember: at any time you can tweak the model by playing with the Directive.