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Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Students

Provides a general overview of uses, tools, and issues with GenAI (generative artificial intelligence).

What is a prompt?

prompt is the instruction or question you give to an AI tool to start a task.  Think of it like giving directions--the clearer and more specific you are, the better the AI can help.

Example:

Weak Prompt: Tell me about climate change
Better Prompt: Summarize three major causes of climate change in under 100 words, using simple language.

Tips for writing clear, helpful prompts

Instruction: Including explicit instructions for the desired behavior, such as: ask the model to think step by step, to rephrase an idea, to summarize an idea, to synthesize two or more ideas. If you are able to, include context as well. 

  • User example: I am preparing an undergraduate level paper on biofuels vs fossil fuels for my electrical engineering class. Develop a list of key arguments on the positives of biofuels and the positives of fossil fuels with citations. 

Context:  Add context to your prompt - this is generally the simplest and is very powerful. It could be by giving the AI a persona, by giving it an audience, or by giving it an output format.

  • Persona example: Act as a college tutor who is expert in Statistical analysis.
  • Audience example: You are writing a summary for a high school student.
  • Output format example: Give me data in a .CSV file.

Explain & Check: Explain your topic or query and check the generative AI understands. 

  • User Example:  “Do not start writing yet,” and “Do you understand?” 

Clarifying Questions: Have the generative AI ask questions to clarify what output you want. 

  • User Example: “Please ask me all the questions you need to understand my prompt”. 

Tone and Direction: Guide the generative AI for their output to be in a particular direction, style, tone or format.

  • Tone example:: "Write a 250 word summary in an academic tone about the connection between biodiesel and crop waste." 
  • Style example: "Take the key points from the previous answer and write a response in a professional tone." 
  • Format example: "Synthesize this article and break the arguments down to a grade 12 level" 

Provide Examples: Use the few shot technique (sometimes called showing examples). This means giving the AI tool several examples to work from so that it follows the logic. This can work well for classifying qualitative research data and similar activities. Provide an example that you have already created or have found, such as: demonstrations of the output needed, a set of keywords, or a reference text.  

  • Research example: Find me more articles published between 2005-2020 like this: Demirbas, A. (2008). Biofuels sources, biofuel policy, biofuel economy and global biofuel projections. Energy Conversion and Management49(8), 2106–2116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2008.02.020. 
  • Qualitative example: Add 7 + 7: 14, Add 13 +9: 22, Add 15 + 19: )

More examples: study help, brainstorming, feedback requests

Task Weak Prompt Better Prompt
Study Help Explain photosynthesis. Explain photosynthesis in one paragraph using simple language.
Brainstorming Ideas What should I write about? Give me five research paper ideas about climate change and technology.
Getting Feedback Is this paragraph good? Review this paragraph and suggest how I can improve clarity and flow.
Research Tell me about World War II. List three major causes of World War II, each in one sentence.