Six Simple Tips for Crafting a Prompt (Instruction)

Be Specific: The more concrete and clear you are, the better the result from the digital assistant will be.
Pay Attention to Language: Consider sentence structure, write simply, and avoid negation (i.e., words like “not” and “no”). A digital assistant often responds best in English. Most language models are based on English training data and are therefore better suited to understand the nuances of the English language. You can ask it to translate to Norwegian afterward if you need to use part of the response directly.
Work with Priming: Priming can be explained as enhancing or warming up the model – or getting it to “lean the right way” so it interprets the task in the correct direction. It’s about giving the assistant a hint on how to respond or solve a task as part of the prompt.
Instruct Step by Step: Language models provide better explanations when given the opportunity to respond stepwise. By adding the instruction “let’s think step by step” in a prompt, the model can add context and explain how it arrived at the answer.
Provide Examples: Give the digital assistant examples of what you want it to achieve. This way, it can learn from the examples and use this knowledge to generate tailored results based on similar examples or situations.
Try, Fail – and Try Again: Adjust, tailor, and experiment with the instructions. Identify what works well and what can be improved. Is the response inaccurate? Do you want a different format?

The resource AI for Education offers many suggestions for different prompts you can use, including these specific to students.

Tip!

Is AI tools new to you? These 5 short videos (about 12 min. each) provide a good introduction:
Practical AI for Instructors and Students