Skip to Main Content

AI for Students Guide: Crafting Prompts

Effective and ethical use of AI tools for research and learning

What is a Prompt?

A prompt  is a question, instruction, or topic that is entered into an AI tool to generate a response.

In order to get the most precise, meaningful, and relevant results from AI tools, it's important to write good prompts. 

Wharton professor, Ethan Mollick, has some useful advice about prompting AI:

"The best way to use AI systems is not to craft the perfect prompt, but rather to use it interactively. Try asking for something. Then ask the AI to modify or adjust its output. Work with the AI, rather than trying to issue a single command that does everything you want. The more you experiment, the better off you are."

  • Good prompts help the AI help you. A well-crafted prompt enables the AI to give you meaningful and useful results. A bad prompt may result in irrelevant data or lead you away from the best research.
  • Good prompts are cheap(er). Many AI tools charge per task, in the form of “credits” or "tokens." A good prompt can help you get the desired output without a lot of repeated searches, and it's better for the environment because you're working more efficiently with AI.

Best Practices for Writing Prompts

A useful tool for crafting prompts is the CLEAR Framework — Concise, Logical, Explicit, Adaptive, and Reflective (Leo, 2023). 

  • Concise (and Clear): Prompts should be brief and clear. Focus on keywords and avoid unnecessary words and jargon. 

Identify the optimal number of students in an online undergraduate course

Find research articles on gluten intolerance in humans

  • Logical: Prompts should be structured and coherent. The relationship between words, concepts, and the context should be evident.

Discuss the order and purpose of each section of a research article

Describe the sequence of steps in diagnosing carpal tunnel syndrome

  • Explicit: Prompts should set clear output specifications to produce an answer that is useful.

Identify five factors that led to the onset of World War I.

Describe the economic implications of climate change in developing countries over the next decade

  • Adaptive: Prompts should be flexible and customizable. Be willing to ask again in a different way, refining your prompt based on AI response.

1st: What factors help nursing students pass the NCLEX on the first try

2nd: What student factors affect first-time pass rates on the registered nurse licensure exam

  • Reflective: AI output should be continually evaluated. You may need to craft additional prompts that target gaps or missing information in the initial response. 
    • Does the response answer your question?
    • Does it appear to be based on current research? 
    • Can the response's research or source data be verified? 
    • Are there important perspectives not represented in the response?

Leo, L. S. (2023). The CLEAR path: A framework for enhancing information literacy through prompt engineering. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 49(4), 102720. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102720

Prompting AI

Practical AI for Instructors and Students, Part 3: Prompting AI (11:42 min.); Wharton School

Prompt Resources

©2024 St. Catherine University Library, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License