There’s a TikTok trend that’s taking the sting out of scrolling: Themed microlearning is in. Millennials like Elizabeth Jean have gone viral for creating mini monthly curricula that dive into topics they’ve always wanted to explore. The self-learning trend involves setting three to five personal subjects to master in a season.
Just like you can use artificial intelligence to plan weekend activities, find new books and create recipes out of your leftovers, you can use it to build out a personalized learning schedule.
It’s intentional and fun, and it might be the most useful AI trend I’ve seen so far. Here’s how to build out your first curriculum.
Choose your topics and monthly modules
What are your current fascinations? Are there topics that have sent you down rabbit holes? What have you always wanted to learn, but never had the time?
The goal is to make learning fluid, fun and flexible. If your topics align with your current curiosities, you’re more likely to keep learning.
I asked ChatGPT about the curriculum trend, and it gave me more information about how to structure a syllabus.
I like the idea of having a monthly theme, so I’m going to pick three: a mix of theoretical and practical tasks, with a specific seasonal tie-in for fall — since that was when I started testing this method out. Based on everything it knew about me, ChatGPT gave me a few ideas surrounding identity and memory, nature and grounding and astronomy. The suggestions were a little abstract and too focused on fall, so they didn’t resonate with me. Tree and leaf observation? Nope.
I’m currently trying to conceive, so simplicity and ease are my themes.
In a follow-up prompt, I told ChatGPT to forget about the fall season and come up with topics based on my interests. We got a little closer, but it was all based on previous prompts, rather than some deep-seated interests (that I might not have shared).
Here’s the kind of things it suggested:
The personal development ideas were more on the mark and suggested I practice networking with intention by hosting monthly dinners. (It had picked up on a previous prompt related to my goal of wanting to expand my network.)
I landed on three learning topics:
- Reading ancient spiritual texts.
- Learning about low-inflammation eating.
- Exploring birth work.
You probably instinctively know what you’d like to learn, but it’s helpful to chat it out because it might spark an idea. Then, you can go to ChatGPT to create the structured plans and an activity or assignment.
Create your curriculum
Once you’ve got your topics in hand, it’s time to create the curriculum and assign a practical activity or assignment for each one. ChatGPT can do this for you, as well as compile your learning resources. You could even use agent mode (only available with a paid plan) to compile all your resources on a specific topic.
You could prompt it to find all of the most important resources for a beginner learning about «XYZ topic.»
Here’s the prompt I gave to create the curriculum after inputting the three topics above in my bullet points: «Create a learning curriculum for each topic, with an assignment or activity at the end of each month.»
And here’s what it generated:
I liked maybe half of the topics for each month, so I responded with feedback to further hone the themes. I told ChatGPT to «think more like a teacher,» and also steered it in the direction of what spiritualities I’m interested in learning about, and to come up with more practical learning ideas.
The follow-up prompt got me a lot closer. Promoting ChatGPT to act like a teacher improved it dramatically. It came up with a lot more courses and specific topics to learn about:
Make sure you go through each of the topics and subtopics to ensure they’re appropriate. ChatGPT assigned a task to reach out to a clinic in week 3, which I’d never do. A better end-of-month assignment would be to decide if, after everything I’ve learned, I’d like to take a doula course.
You’ll have to guide ChatGPT to keep each week’s learning list short, relevant and realistic.
Once you have the overarching curriculum, use the ChatGPT agent mode to source the most appropriate learning resources.
The cool thing about your curriculum is that there are no rules. Learn in whatever way feels fun for you, and lean on AI to make the process more productive.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)