Prompts are the queries, commands, or even the conversations that users pose to an AI platform. Prompts can be thought of as a progression, perhaps an evolution, of the queries utilized in traditional Internet searches. Specifically, an allure of prompts is that they can be transmitted using natural, conversational language with the program.
Prompt generation gets a lot of attention, some say it is of critical importance, others say it's not that important, just experiment with AI and you will get the hang of it. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Research has found that prompts with more detail tend to get better results. It is also helpful to tell the AI what it is (you are a college professor designing an introduction to philosophy course, you work for a company that designs innovative and engaging apps...) The more specific you can get, the more the AI has to work with.
Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School, and his team have developed prompts that may be helpful in the higher education world:
Anthropic, the company that created Claude, an AI similar to Copilot and Google Gemini, has created a library of prompts. You can browse through it to get ideas of what AI can do. Also listed are prompt libraries from other institutions.