How to prompt ChatGPT and generative AI | THE Campus Learn … – Times Higher Education
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To fulfil its potential, generative artificial intelligence requires effective instructions. In the first of a series, Seb Dianati and Suman Laudari explain how to craft a useful AI prompt
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Generative artificial intelligence (AI), most notably ChatGPT, is a powerful language model that has the potential to revolutionise how teachers teach and how learners learn. This technology can be applied across a wide range of disciplines, for a variety of applications, and across the whole senior leadership team, making it a valuable addition for implementation of operational, procurement or strategic objectives. However, tools such as generative AI will produce substandard results if incorrectly prompted. This is the first in a series of resources aiming to guide you in some key features of prompting AI effectively to get the most accurate output for the context. While not all the prompts we will cover have been evaluated, the aim is to demonstrate the level of specificity needed to extract an effective output.
Before prompting generative AI, several considerations can increase the quality of your output.
While many use generative AI for surface-level commands, such as subject or conceptual knowledge on a subject, the real power of these tools comes when you are creative. For instance, you might ask, “what is something universities do not consider in their strategic plans”. What is a “counter-narrative to the main positive developments in AI using a critical theoretical lens”? Avoid obvious, objective and transparent “yes” or “no” types of responses. Be as creative and as critical as possible when generating your prompts. If you are unhappy with your output, you can always regenerate your response.
The length of the output is significant. For instance, you may want the text from a 20-minute YouTube video to be summed up as concisely as possible, or perhaps you would like a 500-word summary on a particular issue. Either way, you will need to prompt it effectively, so include “write 500 words on XYZ”. Furthermore, you need to include the output you would prefer if it were not text, as the output can be in Python, HTML, text or CSV. You must prompt it if you don’t want just text and would rather receive it as an Excel output.
Don’t ask ChatGPT for anything after 2021, such as “what happened around the world this week”, as the large corpora of data used to generate the AI outputs are taken only from events prior to 2021.
Last, don’t forget that you can add follow-up prompts to access even more concise information, for example: “use this data and find out revenue and expenditure – now identify cost savings from the original budget provided.”
This is not an exhaustive list. Effective prompting can lead to more accurate, more relevant and more reliable information for you to act on. Try your own prompts now and remember to include as many of these prompt commands as possible.
This is the first of a five-part series covering 100 applications of ChatGPT in teaching and learning. The second resource will address applications of generative AI within curriculum and assessment; the third resource will focus on 25 applications for academic administration; the fourth resource will provide 25 prompts on student and academic engagement; and the last resource in this series will be on research and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Please note that prompts and various applications of AI output should adhere to the fundamental values of the International Centre for Academic Integrity: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility and courage.
Seb Dianati is an academic lead for digital learning initiatives, and Suman Laudari is a digital learning designer, both at Charles Darwin University.
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