Prompting for Staff
Generative AI can help staff draft communications, summarize information, organize projects, brainstorm ideas, and improve documents. Clear prompts help AI produce responses that better fit your needs and workplace context.
What Makes a Good Prompt?
To write an effective prompt, describe the task, the type of response you want, and any relevant context. Think of prompting as giving clear directions to a collaborator, the more specific your instructions, the more likely you are to receive a helpful response.
Bowen and Watson (2024) recommend including these key elements:
- Task: What exactly do you want the AI to do? (e.g., brainstorm, summarize, explain, translate, or create)
- Format: What should the response look like? (e.g., email, meeting agenda, table, report, or presentation outline)
- Voice: What tone or style should the response use? (e.g., professional, conversational, encouraging, concise, or written for a specific audience)
- Context: What background information, examples, constraints, or learning objectives should the AI consider?
Prompt Example
- Task – Draft a campus email.
- Audience – University students.
- Format – A concise email with a subject line and bullet points.
- Context – Remind students to register for the upcoming semester, include the registration deadline, encourage them to meet with their academic advisor, and provide links to registration resources.
- Tone – Professional, friendly, and informative.
Refine Your Results
Generative AI works best through conversation. Ask follow-up questions, provide more context, and refine your prompts to improve the response. For example:
- Make the language more concise.
- Include accessibility considerations.
- Convert the information into a table.
- Rewrite for a diverse audience.
Remember to review AI-generated responses for accuracy, completeness, bias, and appropriateness before using or sharing them. Protect privacy and intellectual property when using generative AI. Do not include student records, grades, personally identifiable information (PII), student work, research data, or other confidential or copyrighted university materials in your prompts unless you are using an institutionally approved AI tool that is authorized to process that information.
Related Resources
- Ready-to-use AI Prompts for Higher Education – Google for Education resources with ideas for administrators, faculty, research, and students
- Strategies for Writing Better Prompts – Google Cloud guide with practical prompting strategies and example
- Artificial Intelligence at NDSU: Goals, Guidance, and Research (KB 155103) - resources for instructors, students, and research work
- AI Use at NDSU - resources for instructors and students along with the AI policy and tools.