In the professional development context for world language instructors, addressing AI and its myriad applications in language education is growing in importance for many reasons, among which is its ubiquitous presence in educational technologies and varied performance in languages other than English. Working with a group primarily composed of Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) teachers at the Penn Language Center in Fall 2024, we explored how AI technologies could be leveraged to enrich our professional development workshops series for instructors of world languages. This piece reflects on our iterative prompting process for using ChatGPT to create engaging, multilingual lesson plans that resonate with teachers, connect to their pedagogical practices, and enrich professional development opportunities.
utilizing ChatGPT to generate lesson plans in the target language of each of the instructor-participants at our recent workshop was an effective way to incorporate AI in a professional setting. In this article we outlined the process of prompting that we undertook to align the workshop activity to the overall objectives of the workshop, and found that the final product was well-received. By leveraging AI to support collaboration and creativity, we took a significant step toward designing more inclusive and language-specific educational practices which prompts meaningful engagement with the world’s linguistic and cultural diversity.
