In the world of Digital Solutions education, the demand for high-quality practice materials that align with the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) standards is high. As a DigiSol teacher, I’ve seen my students continually call out for resources to be made for me so that they can study at home in preparation for the EA. The QCAA provides access to past papers, but that’s about it and that places the burden on teachers to continually create new content. This challenge sparked my journey to create a custom GPT model that could generate QCAA-themed exam questions. Here’s how I brought this idea to life.
The Drive Behind the Project
My students have a tremendous appetite for studying, constantly seeking more practice questions to hone their skills for the QCAA external exams (it is not like schools that I’ve taught at previously – and frankly its pretty cool). However, the limited number of practice questions available can quickly be exhausted, especially by motivated students. Now this isn’t really the fault of the QCAA, our system is so new that we just don’t have too many resources yet. But the past paper collection will develop eventually. This situation left me in a cycle of constantly needing to create new material to keep up with their demands. I realised that if I could create a tool that generated these questions automatically, it would not only satisfy my students’ needs but also alleviate the ongoing pressure on me to produce new content continuously.
The Process
Although the QCAA provides some resources, including past papers and sample questions, the volume isn’t enough to meet the needs of a classroom full of eager students…yet. It might be in the future as we catch up to the HSC in terms of the number of years the subject has been implemented but to address this current gap, I gathered all the available QCAA materials and used them as the foundation for training the custom GPT. Their license (as best my understanding) allows us to utilise this data for training information in models because the license allows us to modify their publicly published documentation. This dataset, while not vast, was crucial in helping the model learn the specific style, structure, and rigor expected in QCAA exams. All of these resources are publicly available on their website so I just pointed the model to the resources online.
The process of developing a custom GPT is fairly simple for paid subscribers of ChatGPT. Basically you just open the window and start writing a prompt of what you want it to do, but the real magic is getting that prompt right. Unforutnately, I don’t really have some secret recipe for this yet, but the prompt I’ve written appears to be working over multiple subjects.
Next, I fine-tuned the custom GPT model using this dataset. The fine-tuning process was frustrating at times because when testing it would give you an output that seemed perfect and then the very next output would be completely irrelevant so multiple iterations of that process meant that the generated questions were not only accurate but also varied enough to provide a continuous stream of new practice materials. This step was crucial to ensuring the model didn’t just repeat the same questions but could generate fresh, relevant content for every request.
Understanding the pressures faced by my fellow educators, I decided to make this tool freely available online. I didn’t want to keep this hidden in my own personal library of custom GPTs so I first shared it with the Digital Solutions teachers Facebook group. For any DigiSol teachers that are out there that haven’t joined that community I would highly recommend it as I’ve gained so much from the community and now hope that I’m starting to give back a little. By sharing that GPT, I hoped to not only lighten my own load but also help other teachers across Queensland who were facing similar challenges in resource creation.
The response to this tool has been mostly positive, I’ve had some feedback letting me know that it doesn’t create Data Flow Diagrams that fit the QCAA requirements which is fair enough, but at the same time I never really tried to get that to work as the graphics generation engine in DALL-E isn’t really built for that. In terms of from my students, they’re really happy that they now have access to a continuous stream of fresh, exam-style questions, which has greatly enhanced their study sessions. For me, the tool has significantly reduced the time and effort needed to create new practice materials, allowing me to focus more on other aspects of teaching.
Creating this custom GPT was driven by a need to meet my students’ hunger for more practice material without overburdening myself with endless content creation. It’s a solution that has worked well in my classroom and, I believe, can be a valuable resource for other teachers facing similar challenges. By sharing this resource, I’ve also contributed to a broader community of teachers who can now benefit from an easily accessible, high-quality source of exam practice questions. This project has further highlighted the potential of AI in education, particularly in easing the workload on teachers while simultaneously enhancing students’ learning experiences. This project has shown that with the right tools and a bit of innovation, we can make a significant impact on both teaching and learning. I’ll continue to work on this version of the custom GPT and try to push it out to as many subject areas and I can. If you visit the Custom GPTs page on my site, I’ll have a list of everything I’ve built so far, and if there’s something that you’d like to see built or have some feedback on a current tool, send me and email and if I’ve got some spare time I’ll hopefully be able to take that on for you, no promises, we all have busy schedules, but I really will try to take that on if I can. All I ask in return is a simple thank you at the end if I’m able to get it working. Manners do go a long way!!
