Preus Library's AI Literacy Guide

The quality of your AI-generated content will depend on the quality of what you plug into it: your prompt. An imprecise prompt is more likely to yield AI output that is inaccurate, biased, or poorly suited to your needs.

A thoughtful, well-written prompt requires careful planning, logic, and critical thinking. The following frameworks are designed to help you think about how to craft quality prompts.

Important note for students: do you understand your professor's policies about the use of AI for class? Check your syllabus.

Librarian Leo Lo at the University of New Mexico developed the CLEAR framework for writing good prompts:

C     Concise. Strive for brevity and clarity. Remove extraneous details and fluff.
L     Logical. The prompt should have a coherent structure and an orderly flow.
E     Explicit. Be direct and specific.
A     Adaptive. Be flexible and experiment. If your first attempt doesn't work well, try again with an adjusted prompt.
R     Reflective. Evaluate your process and the output. Apply what you've learned and improve your skills.

Example:

Poor prompt: "How does metamorphosis work? I need wording for an activity I have to put together for a group of kids."

Better prompt: "Explain metamorphosis in language suitable for second grade students. Refer to specific examples."

Read more about the CLEAR framework at The CLEAR path: A framework for enhancing information literacy through prompt engineering by Leo S. Lo, published by the Journal of Academic Librarianship.

The PTCF framework offers a different approach to prompt engineering for LLMs that emphasizes context, so that AI output is generated with the correct tone, length, and reading level:

P     Persona. What role should the AI take? (e.g. business manager, museum director, school teacher)
T     Task. What content should the AI generate? (e.g. social media post, report, email)
C     Context. What are the surrounding circumstances? (e.g. audience, related data, other constraints)
F     Format. How should the output be structured? (e.g. list, table, outline; how long/short?)

Example:

"Act as the organizer for a college knitting club [Persona]. Write a short one-paragraph blurb [Format] inviting students to 1-hour social knitting circles on Tuesdays at 4pm. [Context] Use a friendly and welcoming tone. The blurb should be appropriate for use in either an email newsletter or social media post. [Task]"

Read more about the PTCF framework at AI Prompting Cheat Sheet: The PTCF Formula by Greater Lowell Technical High School.