Using OpenAI and ChatGPT Models with LearnDash

Brendan Da Costa
February 21, 2023
Featured Plugins, Recipe Ideas, Use Cases
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The AI revolution is here! (In the best way possible.) Learn how to power your e-learning and LearnDash LMS with OpenAI and ChatGPT models using Uncanny Automator.

When people hear the term “artificial intelligence” they tend to think of rogue robots, anarchic androids or sinister cyborgs taking over the world and giving humanity the same short shrift that the asteroid gave to the dinosaurs all of those years ago. While, we admit, an AI-induced apocalypse might—but probably won’t—one day come to pass, the AI that we have today is here to help.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use OpenAI and ChatGPT models with LearnDash so you can harness the power of AI for your e-learning platform. Automatically draft lessons, create course outlines, and even answer students’ questions with the help of AI and automation tools such as Uncanny Automator.

Join the robot revolution in e-learning—and save yourself countless hours and thousands of dollars in the process!

Introduction to OpenAI and ChatGPT

OpenAI is the artificial intelligence research laboratory behind the popular chatbot, ChatGPT. Built on OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) model, ChatGPT is the very latest in natural language processing (NLP) technology.

With a beta version that launched in 2020, the AI uses statistical modeling and deep learning to create human-like text. That’s basically just the high-tech way of saying that ChatGPT read a lot (and we mean A LOT) of content across the internet to learn how people write on various topics so that it could do the same.

Since ChatGPT’s official launch in November 2022, the internet has had fun prompting it to make poems, create languages, and compose fan fiction—but the advanced AI can do so much more.

You’ll need to create an account with OpenAI to power your e-learning platform with artificial intelligence. To create an account, all you need is an email and a password—and the ability to take a single-question Turing test to prove that you are not, yourself, a robot.

Introduction to LearnDash

LearnDash is the #1 learning management system (LMS) for WordPress. Whether you’re running an after school program or managing training and compliance for a multinational corporation, LearnDash has all of the features you need to create a functional (and futuristic) digital classroom.

With LearnDash, you can easily build your e-learning platform from the ground up—from granular lessons and quizzes, up to modules and even course groups that define entire curricula. And don’t forget to keep your students motivated with certificates for completion or outstanding grades.

If you haven’t already, click here to get the LearnDash plugin and join the future of e-learning!

The Benefits of Automation and AI in E-learning

Pairing your LearnDash LMS with OpenAI comes with several benefits:

Save Time: OpenAI churns out large amounts of text faster than a caffeinated cartoon typist. Cut back on the time it takes you to create course content, leaving you more time to interact with your students.

Save Money: Cut back on your content creation costs with OpenAI by reducing the amount of time it takes to generate quality content.

Stay on Brand: Once you find the right configurations and prompts for your OpenAI model, you’ll be able to rapidly produce content that is consistent and on-brand.

Developers and educators are constantly finding new ways to apply AI to e-learning. But here are just some of the ways that you can start using AI in your LearnDash LMS today:

Create Course Outlines: Standardize your course creation process and help educators save time with auto-generated course outlines.

Draft Lessons: Use simple forms or other input methods to automate the process of drafting new lessons.

Tutor and Support: Once you get the hang of OpenAI, you can create chatbots to help tutor your students and support them through the learning process.

In the following sections, we’re going to actually walk through the steps of connecting LearnDash to OpenAI. You’ll need at least the Pro version of Uncanny Automator to follow along, however Automator offers a 14-day money back guarantee so trying out premium features comes at no-risk to you.

After you’ve downloaded Automator Pro, read this guide on connecting it with your new OpenAI account or find the abridged version below:

Under your account tab in your OpenAI account page, click on View API keys. In the API Keys screen, click Create new secret key and copy the new key.
From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Settings. Click on the App integrations tab and scroll down to OpenAI.
Paste the key from your OpenAI account into the field labeled Secret key and click Connect OpenAI account.

Now you’re ready to power your LearnDash LMS with OpenAI!

Build an AI-Generated Course Outline

OpenAI is, perhaps unsurprisingly, great at understanding structure—it is, after all, a computer. That makes it the perfect teacher’s assistant when it comes to creating course outlines. Here’s how it’s done.

Step 1: Create a New Recipe

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. In the pop-up window that appears, select Logged-in users.

Step 2: Name Your Recipe

We’ve named this recipe OpenAI LearnDash Course Outline but we recommend coming up with whatever naming convention suits your workflows best.

Step 3: Configure Your Trigger(s)

The trigger is the event that will set your recipe into motion. For our workflows, we’ve created a WPForms form to pass information to OpenAI. Based on the OpenAI inputs (that we’ll discuss later), a basic form can look something like this:

A form-based trigger can be useful to restrict direct access to OpenAI while still allowing multiple users to take advantage of it.

To use a form-based trigger, in the Triggers panel, from the menu of available integrations, click WPForms or your preferred form-building plugin.

From the drop-down list that appears, select A user submits a form.

Automator will prompt you to select a form. After you’ve selected your course outline creator form, click Save. Your trigger should look like this:

Step 4: Configure Your Primary Action

In the Actions panel, click Add action. From the menu of available integrations, select OpenAI.

From the drop-down list that appears, select Use a prompt to generate text with the Davinci model.

Automator will present you with an editor where you can configure the information that it will pass along to OpenAI.

Temperature defines how “creative” you want OpenAI to be in its response with lower values indicating less creativity and higher values indicating more creativity.

Maximum length refers to the number of tokens that OpenAI has, with 100 OpenAI tokens roughly correlating to 75 English language words. For a comprehensive breakdown of OpenAI tokens, click here.

Not to be confused with OpenAI’s tokens, Automator has its own tokens (i.e., dynamic pieces of data pulled from your website and even from within recipes).

In our example, we’re allowing users to pass along both temperature and maximum length information to OpenAI by using Automator tokens that pull data from the WPForms trigger. To use Automator tokens, click on the Asterisk and select a token from the drop-down list.

Note: In practice, temperature is correlated to your brand’s voice and OpenAI calculates cost based on the number of tokens you use. As such, you may not want to permit all users to change those settings and opt, instead, to use static values in those fields.

Using all Automator tokens, we’ve filled in the remaining fields as such:

Once you’ve filled in the fields in the way that best suits your workflows, click Save. Your action should look like this:

Step 5: Configure Your Secondary Action

The first action that we’ve created will get OpenAI to generate our course outline. This secondary action will get that course outline created in LearnDash.

In the Actions panel, click Add action. From the menu of available integrations, select WordPress.

From the drop-down list that appears, select Create a post.

Automator will present you with an editor, similar to the one from the first OpenAI action. In the field labeled Type, select Course.

In the field labeled Content is where we’re going to include the output from OpenAI. Click on the Asterisk and select Actions > Use a prompt to generate text with the Davinci model > Response.

Similarly, in the Title field, use the Course Title token from the WPForms trigger to automatically generate your course title.

Once you’re finished, click Save. Your Actions panel should now look like this:

Step 6: It’s Alive! It’s Alive!

The last thing for you to do is to toggle the recipe from Draft to Live.

Just for fun, here’s the course outline that OpenAI returned from the information that we put in our form:

…maybe the AI is sentient after all.

Note: OpenAI is fast—but not necessarily instantaneous. It can take a few seconds to return content, so if you don’t see a new post right after it runs, wait approximately 30 seconds. The time it will take also depends on the model you choose (Davinci is slowest) and the number of tokens you allow (more tokens means more time). If the action times out, consider changing the model or reducing the number of tokens.

Build an AI-Generated Lesson

Now that we have our outline, it’s time to generate the lessons that will make up the bulk of our course content. And if anyone knows anything about supercomputers, it’s probably OpenAI—it’s built on one.