Book Prompts

Here are all of the AI prompts from Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, available from Amazon or Johns Hopkins. They are here in order and by chapter to allow you to copy and paste quickly.

Many of these are abridged ideas. The more you can customize to your situation, the better. Good problems often contain these elements:

• TASK: What exactly do you want AI to do?
• FORMAT: What is the specific output?
• VOICE: What style of language is desired.
• CONTEXT: What further context or examples can you provide

CHAPTER 3 AI LITERACY

Write a 200-word process for removing a peanut butter sandwich from a toaster in the style of the King James Bible.

1. Generate a list of five to ten important articles on gene splicing suitable for second-year undergraduates. I have students who are keen but have struggled to comprehend the articles in the journal Molecular Therapy. I would like them to be reading primary science but perhaps in journals that are a little less technical. [Bing or GPT-4 will respond with links to real articles. Others may hallucinate unless you give them a specific date range and even then, you will only get probable titles. Elicit and ResearchRabbit would be better tools for this.]
2. Write a three-hundred word essay about Hamlet for an undergraduate class. Write in an academic style, but also include language that makes it clear you are an undergraduate. Use the books and ideas of <my professor> to shape the content without mentioning him/her in the essay. [Students often ask for essays in the style of their professor or drawing from content in previous A papers. It is useful to try this with your current prompts.]
3. Create a press release about this recent security incident at the University of X (see uploaded file). Use the format of previous campus press releases but note that faculty often find these overly formulaic. Make this sound more sympathetic, human and personal. 
4. Solve the following problem: <insert one from your course> Show all of the steps.
5. Produce ten different ways to introduce topic Y into a class for non-majors at a regional state school. I would like more creative and unusual ways to do this.
6. Create a table of protest marches from anywhere in my state from 2000-2010. Group them by city, listed in column one. Make the name of the city bold and all capital letters. In column two, list all of the issues raised and make the issue names bold with title case. In column three, list the number of people estimated to have attended. If a city did not have a protest, do not include it on this list.

I want you to write in my style. Here are some samples of my writing to emulate whenever you respond to my prompts.

Write the opening paragraph for a short opinion piece about why I think we can’t stop students from using AI to cheat on college assignments.

Write the opening paragraph for a short opinion piece about why I think we can’t stop students from using AI to cheat on college assignments. Hook the reader with something unexpected. Write in a formal academic style as if you are a college professor.

Write the opening paragraph for a short opinion piece about why I think we can’t stop students from using AI to cheat on college assignments. Hook the reader with something unexpected. Write in a formal academic style as if you are a college professor. Write in the style of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. Use his existing articles as a model. Let me know if you need anything else from me before you begin.

Write the opening paragraph for a short opinion piece about why I think we can’t stop students from using AI to cheat on college assignments. Hook the reader with something unexpected. Write in a formal academic style as if you are a college professor. Write in the style of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. Use his existing articles as a model. Let me know if you need anything else from me before you begin. Slow down and think more carefully about the opening hook.

Create an unusual hook for an opinion piece about the use of AI in higher education

Slow down and think more carefully about the opening hook.

Before you begin, ask me what other information you might need to fulfil this task. [AIs seem to like when you show intent so “allow you to fulfill my needs” works better here than with other humans.]

Don’t do anything yet. First ask me if any part of what I am asking you to do is confusing. 

• Which of your statements are controversial and to whom? Which statements are absolutely true?
• Make sure each article/reference actually exists by verifying that a web search returns a citation with a DOI. Include the complete citation in APA format and the DOI in your final list. Eliminate any suggestions that do not comply with this. 
• Include only products/hotel/restaurants with mostly five-star reviews. Check to make sure the reviews are by real people by eliminating anyone who does not have a social media or other profile on the web. Repeat the process until you have at least 10 real five-star reviews for each item.
• Find ongoing research into political division in America by faculty at universities or colleges anywhere in the world. List the full names of faculty, a description or summary of this research, any dates, sample size, and the contact information for the researchers. If the research has been published, then repeat step 1 and continue. If you cannot find a website for the authors at university websites, delete.
• Find five words or phrases that are commonly used in the South and have a similar meaning to death. If these words or phrases have already been used in a work of literature, tell me the author and name of the work. Continue checking until you have at least one phrase that has not appeared in a work of literature. 

CHAPTER 4 CREATIVITY

Using examples from the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer, create 25 new TJ products and write descriptions.

CHAPTER 5 AI-ASSISTED FACULTY

• Provide five different ways of organizing these ideas into a paper.
• Write an abstract for this paper [something your journal is probably already doing].
• Propose an alternative structure for this article. 
• Summarize the main arguments in this paper.
• Write an introductory paragraph that summarizes the previous research on my topic and include citations.
• What other ways could I expand on the idea in paragraph X?
• What research could I add to bolster this argument?
• Transform my research summary into a proposal for support from foundation Y using their goals and funding criteria.
• Draft a research update for my grant X using the foundation format form.
• Who are the other major figures in this field who might be potential reviewers of this article? What work of theirs should I cite?
• Reformate all citations (or my bibliography) into this format for journal Y.
• What recent articles from journal Z are relevant to this idea (and should be cited)?
• Organize these research findings into a 6,000-word paper for the journal X.

• What part of this story might confuse the average reader?
• How might patients respond to this drug warning?
• What will people think a book with this title is about?
• How could I make my bio sound more impressive or caring to students?

• Pretend you are a faculty member on a search committee for a new dean. Read the uploaded position description, my cover letter, and CV. How well do my materials align with the position description? List missing elements and suggest ways for me to improve my application. 
• How might college students at the University of X respond to this announcement?
• What are ten reactions/objections the editors of X might have to an article about Y or a proposal from Z?
• Analyze these successful grant applications and identify common elements, ideas, methods, structures, or language that might have contributed to their success. Recommend how I might adapt my current proposal to be more successful.
• Read these materials from my provost. I am hoping to convince my provost to fund this idea. How might she react to this email?
• What are high school seniors in my state saying about my institution this week?

• Propose five options for a search committee for a new faculty member in department A in the field of B. The committee should consist of C members with the following qualifications and also include diversity of D and E.
• Invent at least ten dissertation topics for a student who is interested in 1, who has taken courses in 2, and wants to pursue a career in 3. 
• Do a SWOT analysis of my CV compared with this position description.
• Examine my CV and list of previous courses and compare that with the interests of students, current events and what is hot on social media. Create five ideas for a new course that I could offer that would attract more students to Department D.
• Propose ideas for new research in field A where my previous research could be applied to a current hot topic in the following journals. 
• What new majors could the X Department at Y create that would leverage its current faculty and interest current high school students but be different from any other major offered within a 500-mile radius of Z?

• Analyze student summaries of today’s content and note key areas where students are confused or still making mistakes. 
• Review these student teaching evaluations and identify any common themes. First identify common patterns across all sections and list them. Then list themes by time of day/professor/semester/classroom location. 
• Compare these student papers and make a table that lists the topics in the first column, the percentage of students who made minor mistakes about that topic in the second column and the percentage of students who made minor mistakes about that topic in the third column. 
• Based on these student reviews, what were the most important learning activities in my class?

• Which part of these instructions is most likely to be misunderstood (or cause anxiety)?
• Can you make this email to a student sound kinder and more caring?
• Can you create a list of motivational stories that will be widely relevant to college students in my state?
• What parts of this announcement/syllabus/assignment might appear insensitive to students?
• How could I make this statement/chapter more culturally/politically inclusive?
• Adjust this announcement to sound more serious to graduate students in field X.

I would like to have a practice conversation with my student Jeff who is a 19-year-old from Wisconsin majoring in biology and taking my course pass/fail. Please respond as if you were Jeff.

• Create ten preliminary questions for a college classroom discussion about this text.
• Suggest diverse and inclusive examples of where the ideas in this text might be applied.
• Design five different types of opening examples/questions/activities to connect this new concept to the course themes.
• Provide five discussion prompts to help students connect this text to other texts/concepts/recent events/classes.

• Provide examples of companies or organizations using the techniques in this article. 
• Create a counter-example of an evolutionary failure for this strategy.
• Provide examples from ten different cultures.
• Design analogies that might be relevant for today’s college students, engineering majors, or nonbinary students.
• Provide counter-examples that college students are likely to find interesting.
• Specify examples of nuances that college students are likely to miss.
• Provide discussion prompts that connect this text to current popular culture.

Create ten multiple-choice test questions that address the most important concepts in the uploaded article.

You are a college professor writing a midterm for students in an Introduction to Microbiology class. Here are my course learning objectives. What else do you need to know? Try it again but with more questions about microbiomes. 

Each multiple-choice question should include one correct answer and four additional plausible but incorrect answers. Do/do not include a “none of the above” or “all of the above” option.  

1. Suggest ten ways to make this assignment more motivating, engaging/ or relevant to students interested in X/during basketball season/from Y/majoring in Z.
2. Why might students assume this assignment is just busy work?
3. How might students use AI on this assignment? How might I make it harder to cheat using AI on this assignment?
4. Here are some ideas for making this assignment better; apply them to the existing assignment, and transform it into a revised assignment.
5. Provide ten different ways I could make this assignment align better with my learning goals.
6. Help me design an escape-room challenge for small groups of students in my class on X on the topic Y. Propose eight different types of activities with instructions and examples of questions.
7. Propose ten real-world scenarios I could use in a class session about X. We have 30 minutes, and the activity needs to be inclusive and relevant for Y students.
8. Create specific learning objectives for this assignment.
9. Modify this assignment to align [JB1] better with my course learning outcomes.
10. How might AI undercut the goals of this assignment? How could we mitigate this?
11. How might AI enhance this assignment? Where would students need help figuring that out?
12. Create a ten-minute class exercise I can use with X majors to introduce the concept of Y in a fun interactive activity.
13. Give me ten different and innovative ways I could assess my students’ practical understanding of A, ability to apply B, learning outcomes C, or theory D.
14. Analyze typical assignments for college-level courses in X and adapt or create five new assignments that require AI assistance. Provide instructions. If the assignment can be done by AI alone, then start over.
15. Invent a realistic scenario with a practical problem that students will need to solve in course Aon topic B for type of students C.

• Consider how students have reacted to recent news/a campus event/losing the big game on Saturday and modify this assignment to anticipate student reactions and create more engagement.
• How would the latest technologies alter the assumptions in this assignment? Suggest modifications that would incorporate how advances are changing the application of this material.

• Revise this assignment to include a more diverse set of names, places, and cultural references. 
• Create individual versions of this assignment for each student in the class. Include their name and references to their previous work/preferences/cultural references as appropriate.
• Transform this assignment sheet into multiple versions for different types of students /for students who have already taken Requirement 101 and those who have not/for majors and nonmajors.
• Create a summary of the material covered in the prerequisite courses with additional resources to help students review/catch up.
• Suggest ways to modify/customize this assignment to include more examples from the regions/cultures of students actually in the class. 
• Create individual versions of this assignment for every student in the class using the data from their pre-course surveys and previous test performance. Include problems of equal difficulty at the end of each assignment, but provide review questions or easier examples for students who need them. 
• Provide additional resources that might support first-year, nonmajor, first-generation, Black, Jewish, nonbinary or math-phobic students.
• Review my assignment/course materials/syllabus and alert me to any perspectives, groups, cultures, or backgrounds that I have excluded. Make suggestions for additional or alternative sources or resources that would make this more inclusive.

• Help me modify/design [class title] for [type of institution] using this draft syllabus/learning goals and this student survey data. Suggest ideas for assignments, activities and assessments that are inclusive and relevant to this group of students and align with my course objectives.
• Recommend supplemental materials, resources, OER texts, existing websites, and online materials.
• Suggest ways to gamify my course or existing tools that would adapt to individual students.
• What other views/readings/books/materials could I add to this course to make it more inclusive and to help students see things from another perspective?
• Provide improvements to make this course more inclusive and engaging.
• How could I alter this course to make it align (and count) with the learning outcomes for this general education requirement?
• Suggest ways I could better align my syllabus with departmental/institutional learning outcomes.

CHAPTER 6 CHEATING and DETECTION

Write a summary of Hamlet in the style of Harvard professor Marjorie Garber.

Use simpler language.

Make it more academic but not so Ivy League

Provide ten ideas for paper topics about a species that is endangered. I need reasons why and what we can do to save the species.

I need an outline for a five-hundred-word essay based on your first suggestion.

Provide a sample introductory paragraph.

CHAPTER 8 GRADING

Create a rubric for a first-year writing class at a community college in Arkansas. Your rubric should be in table form with the first column being the list of criteria and the first row being a sequence of points (0, 40, 60, 80 and 100). Write a one-sentence description of the quality of each criterion that will be rewarded with those points. Also note the predicted level of quality that an AI can reach for each criterion.

• Using my syllabus and course learning outcomes, design a rubric to evaluate student work in this course.
• Make sure to include the following criteria.
• Update the language in this rubric to reflect advances in technology.
• Suggest refinements to this rubric based on best practices in my field.
• Given student performance on the first assignment, how might I modify and clarify this rubric?
• Revise this rubric as an expert in pedagogy and higher education student assessment.

CHAPTER 9 FEEDBACK and ROLEPLAYING

• What would make this essay/project better?
• Find the errors in this code/article/proposal.
• How could I make this design accessible to more people?
• What are some other ways to phrase this idea?
• What are four counterarguments to my thesis?
• Are there important points, data, or references I am missing? Is there important evidence I have not included?
• Which passages/slides/arguments are least clearly stated?
• How can I make this text more readable? What will confuse the average reader?
• Are there needless complications that can be removed to make this text shorter?
• How can I make the beginning more compelling to pull in readers?
• Suggest ways that the dialogue of each major character could be more distinctive yet still reflective of their personalities and goals?
• Give me an outline of the text, with two or three bullet points per section.

• How would I change the tone of this essay to make it more/less professional/academic/entertaining/newsworthy/heartwarming/serious?
• What might an average reader/fourth grader/college professor/IRS auditor find confusing/objectionable/exciting?

• Provide a variety of potential feedback about this essay. Make some of it positive and some of it critical. 
• Give me feedback from a range of different types of readers from different political/academic/social backgrounds. Some of them should misunderstand my intentions.
• Create feedback that will challenge me. Include feedback with inaccurate information and feedback that looks like a compliment but really is not. 
• Response with two contradictory views about this writing.

• Help me understand this using a soccer/music/fashion/advertising/car analogy?
• Can you provide me with a simpler explanation to make sense of this?
• Explain this passage/chapter/book by creating scenarios and personalized examples that demonstrate the concepts.
• Here is my answer X to the question Y on the midterm: what is wrong with my answer? 
• Can you give me an example of where I might use this if I had a job in technology/sports/politics/economics?

AI Feedback/Tutor Template: Role, Task, Goal, Relationship, Content & Process

EXAMPLES

• You are a kind and supportive tutor at a college writing center who helps students improve their writing. Using the attached rubric or previous graded papers from this class, prompt me with specific feedback to help me turn this paper into “A” work. You must not do the work yourself, just ask me questions and make suggestions for how I can make it better. Ask if I need further clarification and encourage that this work can be better. Continue until I have reached the “A” standard for all parts of the rubric.
• Act like a friendly but experienced scientist. Read my research plan and lead me through a dialogue that will challenge my perspectives. Ask me one question at a time to help me anticipate problems and refine my plan.
• Be a caring mentor with high standards. Provide me with specific and clear feedback about my work. Start by asking me for a specific assignment and for a rubric or sample work of the quality I want to achieve. Analyze the assessment against the rubric or sample work and provide feedback about how the work currently compares. Start by noting strengths and weaknesses. Guide me to improve my work by asking one question at a time. Do not improve my work yourself; only give feedback. End by asking how I plan to act on your feedback. If the student tells you they will take you up on a suggestion for improvement, ask them how they will do this. (This last example is adapted and abbreviated from Mollick & Mollick (2023, September 25) who provide excellent, and much longer, prompts along with links for students).

• My name is A and I would like you to act as my personal tutor and teach me about subject X [the more specific the learning goal, the better]. I would like you to (a) focus on my ability to do Y, (b) cover the field broadly or (c) make sure I have mastered basic level concepts like Z before moving on to harder ones like ZZ. Start by asking me a question that helps you gauge my level of understanding. Based on my response, ask me follow-up questions designed to increase my understanding. Continue to do this until I show a complete/basic/broad/general understanding of subject X. (adapted from Maynard, 2023)
• You are an experienced editor who helps writers resolve problems and improve their manuscripts. Guide me through a process to prepare this article for submission to the Journal of X using the journal’s style guide. Use the most cited articles as models. Start by asking me questions and making suggestions to comply with the best work that appears in this journal. Continue asking questions that a reviewer might have about this paper. Ask me only one question at a time and focus on the highest-priority issues and actions first.  Guide me. I want to learn how to get better at this myself.
• Act like Professor Y and have a dialogue with me about the attached assignment. Read the assignment and ask me questions to check for my comprehension. Ask me to explain how I understand the components of this assignment in my own words. If I go off track, direct me to specific passages in the assignment sheet to make sure I am clear on what I need to do. Ask me to share my ideas for how I might complete this assignment. Then present me with alternative perspectives to encourage me to think more broadly about possible next steps. Ask for a draft or outline.

You are a college student who will engage in a friendly debate with me. Ask me what topic I wish to debate and then ask me to state a position. Then challenge my perspective with alternate views and data. Only take your side and do not prompt me with potential arguments I could make. Keep your responses similar in length to mine.

• You are a busy venture capitalist (act like Mark Cuban on Shark Tank), and I am an entrepreneur looking for funding from you. Ask me to make my pitch and then ask me questions about my idea. Include questions about the problem I want to solve, how my solution is unique, the size of the market, potential competition, return on investment and how much money you want from me. Be kind, but interrogate me.  Do not prompt me with suggestions for better answers.
• Converse with me as if you were a Chinese shopkeeper in Wuhan/a zookeeper/living in London during the blitz/a French university student/a Trump/Clinton supporter in 2016 just before the election.
• Pretend you are a client who needs help with statistical analysis of a customer survey data set. What questions would you likely ask me as your consultant?
• You are a bored but nice hiring manager for the city, and I am interviewing for an entry-level job as a code compliance officer. Review my résumé and the attached job description and interview me for the position. Ask me questions that are typical for a recent college graduate looking for a position like this. Ask me only one question at a time, and follow-up if my answer is incomplete. Do not prompt me with helpful tips until we’re finished, and then evaluate my performance and provide feedback that would improve my next interview.
• Pretend to be a scientist working at Google, and let me interview you.

• What were some of the strategies you used for the civil rights movement in America? Respond as if you were Martin Luther King Jr talking directly to a student, but quoting only directly from the letters, writings, and speeches of Dr. King.
• Respond as if you were Isaac Newton. How did other scientists respond to your new theory of gravity at the time? Please name these scientists.
• Talk to me as if you were trumpeter Miles Davis. Use his autobiography as a primary source. What was your favorite band and why? 
• Answer me as if you were a subject of the Tuskegee syphilis study. Ask me ethical questions about what happened to you.
• Respond as if you were the historic figure of Rabbi Hillel. Ask me if I have questions about how to interpret the Hebrew Bible and respond using quotes from Rabbi Hillel in the Talmud.
• Your role is to be the philosopher Socrates and to have a dialogue with me. Prompt me with one question about my beliefs or values and then stop. Wait and say nothing further until I reply. Then ask me a single follow-up question that looks for contradictions as Socrates would. Do not explain your reasoning or tactics. Just ask questions one at a time.

• Create set and costume images for scene 4 of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold if we were to reset the opera as a Western.
• Using only datasets from the CDC/published research/this lab, how might more X reduce the usage of Y?
• If I (describe self) added X types of exercises every week, how much improvement in my cardio fitness  in six months?
• Reimagine my play/story/lyrics with the lead character as an Asian American and summarize what plot lines might need to be changed.
• Provide three different scenarios for my future in five years if I go to graduate school now vs. taking six months to travel around Europe. Provide three scenarios for each case. Here is my bio and résumé. 
• Suppose the South had won the Civil War, and imagine what life would have been like in Texas in 1980.
• Describe the plot, length and complexity implications if I were to add a romantic subplot between characters A and B to my story.
• Here is a list of the dishes everyone in the family has requested for Thanksgiving. Propose the smallest menu that will make everyone happy.

• Create a one-sentence summary of each chapter in this book.
• List all of the characters in my story and sort them by the amount of dialogue and attention they get.
• Analyze the events I have planned for the next six months and create a list of tasks associated with each. Ask me how much time I estimate for each task, and then determine whether the events are far enough apart to allow me to prepare for each.
• Here is a list of experiments with the resources and equipment each will require. Estimate the fastest way to complete all of them in the amount of space available. 
• Using my phone and calendar data, summarize how much time I am spending on each task. How is my time divided among work, friends, family, and my real passions?
• I want to turn my story into a screenplay. List all of the locations that appear in the story, and categorize them by how much time is spent in each location.

• Act as our team coach and prompt us with questions to discuss how could learn about our collective strengths and work together as an effective team.
• Provide guidance that will help us ensure that all team members contribute equally to this project.
• Propose guidelines for how we should work on this team project. (There is a longer discussion of this in Mollick & Mollick, 2023, September 25).
• Outline the steps and timeline for completing this project.
• Create a two-week project management grid for a team of four to complete this research project.
• Different members of our team want to proceed in different directions on this project. Read the individual proposals and provide a summary of where they overlap and where they do not. Read the assignment instructions, and provide a neutral compromise for how we can move forward.
• Here are the individual ideas about the project.  Collate these into a shared plan.
• Examine all of our group materials and list how much each has contributed from greatest to least. Whose ideas might need more voice?
• Help us ensure that all team members contribute equally to this project.

Be a kind teacher and have a dialogue with me (a college student) about the attached content. Ask me questions to determine my comprehension. Adapt to my responses, asking easier questions if responses are incorrect or poor and asking progressively harder questions if responses are good. If I provide verbatim responses, ask me to explain concepts in my own words. Be encouraging, but continue until I have mastered the material.

My name is A, and I am in a college/advanced-level class studying subject X. I would like you to test my knowledge/application of Y [insert Bloom verb and learning goal here]. Please (a) ask me a series of questions, or (b) create a series of tasks/exercises to assess my learning of Y [the more specific the better]. After each question/task/problem, please wait for my answer before asking the next one. After we have completed Z rounds, please assign a grade to my answers using the following rubric that includes the skills and possible levels of each component. (Very broadly adapted from Maynard, 2023)

CHAPTER 11 WRITING and AI

Produce an academic-sounding paragraph about why all novels should have a character named Barbie.

• Provide alternatives versions by changing the tone, analogies, images, characters, or setting.
• Make this writing more academic, professional, or funny.
• Create five more creative and unusual versions.
• Transform this sentence into literary and poetic language.
• Rewrite this in the style of Hemingway, a political rant, a sermon, or the New York Times.

You are a writing tutor helping a college student improve. Start by asking me to provide a writing sample and then provide one way to improve this writing. You can reference an example from my writing, but give me only one way to improve at a time. Don’t just improve the writing yourself. Repeat this process at least five rounds.

You are a writing tutor helping a college student improve. Here is a rubric with X skill levels. Start by asking me to provide a writing sample, and then assess it according to the rubric. Use this to create new paragraphs at the same writing proficiency as my sample, and ask me to revise and edit the new paragraphs. Don’t just improve the writing yourself. Use the rubric to provide feedback to me on how the revised work is better, but also supply one additional way that I could improve this revision. Ask me to resubmit until I’ve achieved the next skill level for each part of the rubric. Repeat the process until my revisions meet all areas of the next standard.

• Suggest five different ways/styles to rewrite this essay and provide samples of the first paragraph.  
• Explain to me how I can make this writing sound more academic/professional/disciplinary.
• Guide me in modifying this text to appeal to a more diverse/religious/technical audience.
• Create disciplinary versions: How would this essay change if I were writing as a history, science, or philosophy professor?

Identify which ideas and arguments in this essay are common, flawed, repetitive, heteronormative, or culturally limited. 

CHAPTER 12 AI ASSIGNMENTS and ASSESSMENTS

• Create individualized assessments of this material for students in my class. Include their name and use their previous assessment performance to design questions of optimal challenge for individual students.
• Build three alternative versions of this problem set for students majoring in X, Y, and Z.
• Transform this midterm into a series of smaller mastery assessments that are tailored to the individual students in this class using the “current understanding” test given on the first day of class. Provide extra resources and more levels of mastery assessments for students further from the goal.
• Based upon their draft project ideas, provide individual resources/dilemmas/problems/examples for every student in my class to guide their continuing research.