thing 5: Prompt Power: Make AI Work for You

What is a prompt?

Wikipedia defines a prompt as “natural language text describing the task that an AI should perform.” Ages ago during the generative AI boom, (2022-2023), people discovered that a well constructed prompt was a type of secret hack to unlock better responses from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot. This led to the rise of prompt engineering: a term used to describe the strategies and techniques behind writing effective prompts. But we now understand that good prompting is really just about clear thinking, intentional phrasing, and lots of practice.

Your best prompts: 

  • Are clear instructions
  • Focus not just on what you want, but why you want it
  • Use structure and tone to shape the AI’s behavior
  • Improve through experimentation and reflection

There are many different frameworks and strategies out there that provide guidance for writing effective prompts, but one that is particularly useful is the C.L.E.A.R framework since it describes the qualities of a good prompt, encourages reflection on the process, and focuses on the iterative nature of the interaction with an AI tool.

Read

Activity

Goal: You’ll write and refine your own prompts for a text-based task in Copilot. Let’s start vague, then improve it step by step.

AI Tools Used:

Step 1: Write a short, one-sentence prompt for Copilot that reflects something you might want help with but don’t worry about making it good yet!

Stuck? Try these prompts

For Copilot: Say something about AI in education

Step 2: Review the output and reflect on your prompt. Identify What might be missing.
Look at your prompt and ask:

  • What’s unclear?
  • What’s the purpose?
  • What’s the output format?
  • Who’s the audience?
  • What’s the tone or style?

Step 3: Now try to revise your prompt. Use the C.L.E.A.R. framework for guidance!

Stuck? Try these for inspiration

For Copilot:
Write a 3-paragraph summary on how generative AI is affecting teaching and learning in higher education. Use clear, plain language for an audience of college faculty new to the topic

Step 4: Reflect, and ask yourself:

  • What changed?
  • What do you think made it more effective?

Discussion

How could writing more effective prompts be used in your in your own work for research, design or outreach?

A Note on Prompting and AI Output

Prompting isn’t perfect, and generative AI tools don’t always rely on real-time facts. Many LLMs generate responses based on patterns in the data they were trained on and not from live information or verified sources. Some tools are “grounded” in search engines or databases, but even these can produce content that sounds accurate but is misleading or just wrong.

Even strong prompts can result in:

  • Inaccurate or fabricated details (“hallucinations”)
  • Biased or stereotypical content
  • Responses that sound confident but may lack evidence or context

Bottom line: Keeping this in mind, prompting helps you shape the response but human judgment, background knowledge, and critical thinking remain essential. Use prompting to clarify how you want the AI to respond but always verify what it gives you. Even great prompts need you to evaluate the response, reflect on what worked, and revise when needed.

4 replies on “thing 5: Prompt Power: Make AI Work for You”

More effective prompts allows for getting information in a timely manner. A work-related example of how GenAI could help is to provide detailed, up-to-date information for when we audit payments for the University and need to confirm that not only University policy, but state and federal policies are also followed. A more effective prompt will allow for accurate information in a timely manner regarding policy specifics.

Writing effective prompts would make the process faster and have the output closer to my original vision. The first prompt I gave it I asked for an email template that gave the user information on four things. The output was an email template with the things I wanted separated into their own sections and had emojis. Next I asked it to redo the template while removing the emojis, not having separators, and putting certain information into bullet pointed sections. It did a much better job that was closer to my original vision. I feel I could also ask for suggestions to make the information better or clearer since it has been trained on other emails that may be similar.

The more clear the initial prompt, the better results will come quickly. It is helpful, and will be helpful in my work, to be able to draft a more precise prompt to get the results I want the first or second time. I’m looking forward to getting better through the practice of generating more clear prompts.

The importance of asking the right questions in a right form when dealing with AI was foreseen by by Robert Sheckley in his “Ask a Foolish Question” story. I highly recommend it. 🙂

Leave a Reply