Diagraming with ChatGPT

This challenge explores how AI-generated visuals can enhance understanding of complex ideas across disciplines.

By using the ChatGPT image generator to create custom diagrams, educators can quickly visualize abstract or layered concepts, making them more accessible to students. This activity highlights AI’s potential to streamline visual resource creation while encouraging critical reflection on accuracy, clarity, and accessibility.

Challenge

The ChatGPT image generator allows users to create custom diagrams from simple text prompts. This is a valuable tool for educators aiming to illustrate concepts that benefit from visual explanation. Whether teaching scientific processes, historical timelines, literary frameworks, or mathematical relationships, a well-crafted diagram can significantly deepen student comprehension.

For this challenge, you’ll use ChatGPT to generate a diagram that illustrates a key concept in your course. After generating the image, you’ll assess its usefulness for teaching and reflect on how it might be improved or customized.

Instructions

Choose a Concept
Pick a topic from your subject area where a diagram would enhance understanding. This could be a process, model, timeline, system, or comparison.
Generate a Diagram Using ChatGPT
Write a clear and specific prompt describing the diagram you want. Example Prompt:
“Generate a labeled diagram of the water cycle showing evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.” If the result doesn’t meet your expectations, revise and refine your prompt to improve the output.
Review and Reflect
- Accuracy: Does the image represent the concept correctly?
- Clarity: Is the diagram easy to interpret and visually helpful?
- Accessibility: Could students with low vision understand it with effective alt text or a description?
- Customization: How could you modify or annotate the diagram to better support your students or match your teaching goals?

Try it Out

Reflect and Share

What does this challenge reveal about the role of AI in teaching and learning? Try it out and share what you discovered in the comment box below, whether it’s your final product, a reflection, or a surprising insight.

Posted

March 28, 2025

AI Challenge, Teaching Materials

Lucas

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Comments

2 responses to “Diagraming with ChatGPT”

Cecilia Gruber

November 7, 2025

Hello,

I asked ChatGPT to create a visual diagram of the Three Delays Framework as describe in this 1994 article by Thaddeus and Maine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8042057/

It generated a simple diagram that looked like an infographic. It was simple yet clearly showed the three delays of: (1) delay the decision to seek care; (2) delay arrival at a health facility; and (3) delay the provision of adequate care.

The first image was a person’s head with a question mark which could point to a lack of information or awareness. This could potentially be better depicted but it does the job I think. I could likely do something like this using a graphic design software such as Canva but it’s good to see how easily AI can come up with a simple and accurate graphic that could easily be used in a Canvas course.

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Kabir Bhalla

November 9, 2025

I prompted ChatGPT to generate a diagram of Kolb’s Cycle that highlights how each stage differs from the others. The first output was not what I was looking for… it simply showed the four stages with a few examples. After re-prompting, something interesting happened: it kept Concrete Experience as an isolated box but combined the other three stages together. The diagram was unclear, and there was not much I could do to modify it to make it work for me.

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