Prompt engineering
When writing an AI prompt, you'll need to determine how much you already know about a topic and decide where you want the AI tool to fill in the gaps. Watch this video to get an idea for the different ways you can prompt.
One of the ways you can start your prompt is by deciding whether you need to ask a question, or give the AI tool a command. You should ask a question if you're still developing your ideas, learning new terminology, or planning your project. If you already have a lot of information, you can prompt using a command. Take a look at these examples for both question and command prompt formatting:
Question format:
- What are some issues affecting [Insert research area here]?
- What is some important terminology on the topic [Insert research area here]?
- Why might someone disagree with [insert your argument]?
- Why is [insert topic] important to [insert group of people]?
- How does [insert topic] improve [insert issue]?
Command format:
- Pretend you're a [insert role/persona]. Write a [insert writing task and style]. It should include information about [insert detailed description of important topics, outlined ideas, statistics, or concepts]. The final product should be [insert length]. Don't include [Insert areas of your topic that you chose to leave out.]
You'll notice that the command formatted prompt requires a lot more detail from you. You should also plan to refine your prompt because most AI tools won't get it right on the first try.
Refining prompt format:
- This was a great start. Can you expand paragraph [insert paragraph number] to include [insert details that were left out].
At this stage, you may realize that you want a certain section to be longer, but don't have the necessary details to give to the AI tool. If this is the case, you can go back to asking questions, search an academic database for more sources, or re-read your original sources for more context.
You may also decide that it's time to take the text out of your AI tool and start editing on your own. This editing is where you'll delete things that don't fit with your ideas, change wording that doesn't quite make your point, add in your own thoughts, and move ideas around to make sure that they make sense to a reader. This process is called revision. You'll also want to make sure that you cite your use of AI. We'll talk about how to do this next.
