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Prompting Strategies for Instructors

09Jan’25

Generative AI

For instructors who want to use AI in their teaching, learning to prompt effectively can save time and produce better results. Prompts are the directions or requests that you, the user, provide to generative AI. The content of the prompts you enter directly influences the responses you receive.

Considerations for Effective Prompting

  • Thoughtful prompting is worth the effort. Learning to prompt effectively can take practice but ultimately saves time by more quickly and consistently generating AI output that meets your expectations.
  • Remember to iterate. If the output you receive isn’t exactly what you want, you can ask AI to revise, expand, adjust, or combine ideas instead of completely starting over.
  • Technology continually evolves. Prompting frameworks are suggestions, not scripts. Use this information as a starting point for further experimentation as AI tools continue to develop.

Basic Prompting Framework

Crafting a detailed prompt that provides AI with a Role, Instructions, Context, and Output (RICO) can generate better initial results that help you get what you want out of AI and require less work to revise.

Start by giving the AI a specific persona or scenario to take on. This helps characterize its response within an appropriate topic, tone, or style. The more specific information you provide, the better. For example:

  • “You are an expert professor of organic chemistry…”
  • “You are developing a course on clinical interaction practices…”
  • “You teach a first-year undergraduate political science class…”

Tell the AI the core task you want it to accomplish. Be as specific as you can, but know that this step and the following step may blend together. For example:

  • “Design an in-class activity…”
  • “Generate five case studies…”
  • “Write an executive summary…”

Provide as much context to your instructions as possible. Context can include details like intended audience, assumed student knowledge, or background information. You may describe these within the prompt or direct the AI to refer to files you upload, such as your lecture notes, slides, or course materials that are not under copyright and do not contain personal information. For example:

  • “The in-class activity should be for 30 students and take approximately 20 minutes to complete. The learning objectives are…”
  • “Each case study should focus on a pediatric patient ages 5-12 and include current vitals, medical history, laboratory results…”
  • “Your summary should highlight the main ideas in the attached PowerPoint presentation…”

Specify the format of the output. Depending on the tool you are using, you may request both text and visual elements. For example:

  • “Provide step-by-step directions for the activity, including the estimated amount of time for each step.”
  • “Include a 100-word clinical note and a bulleted list of test results.”
  • “Generate a timeline of important events and a line graph depicting the population change over time.”

Applying the RICO Framework

When you put together all four components of the RICO framework, you may end up with a prompt such as these:

  • “You are a psychology professor teaching a graduate course on human cognitive development. Write five course learning objectives, each using a verb from Bloom’s Taxonomy. Format the objectives as a numbered list.”
  • “You teach a first-year undergraduate writing seminar. Brainstorm 10 strategies to help your students practice synthesizing information from multiple sources. Create a bulleted list of strategy ideas that includes both in-class and at-home activities.”
  • “You want to send a reminder message to all students enrolled in your online software engineering course. Draft a friendly email that summarizes 2-3 key takeaways from the attached lecture notes and reminds students about the midterm exam due this Friday.”

This framework is only a starting point. Remember that you can always iterate, or ask AI to revise, to improve upon its initial output. You should also plan to review and edit the output yourself before utilizing it in teaching or communication.

3 ways to apply RICO prompts

Depending on the specific task you want AI to complete, there are different ways to apply the RICO prompting framework to get the best possible results.

The examples of RICO-formatted prompts above are all zero-shot prompts, meaning that you can make a request of AI without providing an example of the item you are asking it to create. This type of prompting works well for:

  • Learning objectives
  • Summaries
  • Brainstorming
  • Outlining and drafting
  • Assignments and in-class activities

Along with your written prompt, provide one, a few, or many examples of the item you want AI to create, and ask AI to generate a similar output. This works well for:

  • Exam/quiz question banks
  • Essay or project prompts
  • In-class polling or discussion questions
  • Case studies and patient scenarios
  • Practice assessments

This is a very specific style of prompting that asks an AI tool to explain its process for solving a problem or completing a complex task, using a “think-aloud” style of output. It works best for:

  • Complex math
  • Data analysis
  • Complicated or nuanced decision-making
  • Coaching the user through solving a problem

For further information about the pros and cons of this approach, visit Anthropic’s page on chain of thought prompting. 

CETLI Can Help

CETLI staff are available to discuss ideas or concerns related to generative AI and your teaching, and we can work with your program or department to facilitate conversations about this technology. Contact CETLI to learn more.

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