Artificial Intelligence (AI) Student Resource Guide

Tips for Prompting Generative AI

Prompts are the instructions you type in to to ask the Generative AI tool to perform a task or create an output.

Basic Prompting Tips

  • Talk to AI like you are talking to a person! Be prepared to ask follow-up questions and provide more details.
  • Give it some context or a role to play. Ask it to act as an expert in the subject you're researching.
  • Give it very detailed instructions. Long sentences and paragraphs are fine! The more specific you are, the better the output.
  • Choose an output format - you can ask it to give you a bulleted list, table, study guide questions, computer code, etc.

Seneca Polytechnic Libraries has some great prompting tips & tricks to try. And remember: Always verify the information the AI tool gives you. 

Quick Guide: AI Prompt Engineering Strategies for better results in ChatGPT, Perpexity, and other AI tools.

Your prompt should include:

WHO. Role: Who is the tool writing as? Audience: Who is it writing for? Who is the tool “pretending” to be—a teacher, a scientist, a dancer, a tennis coach? And who is this person writing for? 12-year-olds, the board of the Arts Committee, a professional tennis player? Pro Tip: Use adjectives to help define your "role"

What. Task: What do you want it to do? Voice: Should the tone be informal, chatty, professional? More details = better results. This takes some planning. Think of the ideal response, what you want it to include, how you want it to look, how it should sound, and include that in the instructions.

Why. What is the goal of the task? Explaining the purpose of the task and what you’re trying to achieve helps the AI Tool shape its response to better meet your needs.

Where. What is the context of the task? Include necessary background, any limitation or things NOT to include. Again, this helps generate better results to fit the task.

EXAMPLE: You are an expert, creative writer, working on an essay about pollution. Create a table with 3 columns labelled nouns, verbs, adjectives. Create a vocabulary list of 20 pollution words for each column as a word cache for the essay. The essay is showing the damage to habitat and animals. It is factual, but will create a sense of crisis. The vocabulary list should support those goals.

To improve your results… Include examples: Show it what you want the response to look like/include. Prompt Stacking: Too many directions can confuse AI. Break the prompt into separate parts. It can use results from previous prompts to generate new tasks. Explain Reasoning: Tell it to explain its thinking step-by-step. Ask for multiple versions: Lets you pick and choose and build on better options.

Adapted from Hurd, J.(2023, May 3). Quick guide: AI prompt engineering. Third Space Librarian. https://thirdspacelibrarian.wordpress.com/2023/05/03/ai-prompt-engineering-its-the-new-literacy/