ChatGPT course teaches students to engineer prompts to learn, study

A new course at ASU teaches students to write clear 'prompts' to ChatGPT to enhance learning.

Kevin Pirehpour, Enterprise Technology

July 13, 2023

Artificial intelligence (AI) can do many things, but without people, how useful is it? As instructors and students use AI tools more frequently, the skill of writing clear instructions — or prompt engineering — is becoming more important.

At the forefront of AI-powered education, Arizona State University (ASU) is offering students a chance to learn about effective prompt engineering in a course led by people, developed by AI and designed for students to learn and grow in this ever-changing landscape.

The online class, Basic Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT led by Professor Andrew Maynard of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society Faculty, aims to help students learn how to engineer prompts to tailor AI responses to enhance learning and study habits.

“These technologies, especially large language models, are fundamentally changing how we think about learning and how we create learning environments,” said Maynard. “The course is about exploring completely new ways of approaching learning, as well as a course that gives our students a very specific skill set they can use within this changed world.”

The course explores the latest iteration of OpenAI’s generative AI models, ChatGPT-4, providing hands-on experience in prompt engineering. It offers an inclusive learning environment designed to engage students from diverse backgrounds in understanding how to work and learn with emerging AI systems.

Michael Looney, a junior at Edson College of Nursing & Health Innovation, says he’s interested in learning more about prompt engineering to build apps that help navigate patient experiences. He is also exploring DALL-E, OpenAI’s generative image model, to create a digital art series.

“I’m going into this course with curiosity,” Looney said. “I want to know how to write effective prompts because from my experience, changing even one word can create totally different responses. But I think being able to manipulate AI through prompts is going to be the future.”

The story of ChatGPT started in 2015 with the establishment of OpenAI with GPT-1. Then it was capable of generating coherent sentences for tasks such as translating languages, answering questions and generating some written content. However, its capabilities were limited, and it sometimes produced nonsensical or irrelevant responses, especially when dealing with more complex or nuanced prompts.

Fast forward to the summer of 2023, the latest iteration, GPT-4, is now capable of crafting human-like responses, opening up an array of applications from subject-specific tutoring to creating conversational chatbots.

Basic Prompt Engineering was co-developed with ChatGPT, which was instrumental in designing everything from the syllabus to establishing learning objectives to creating unique exercises. The course requires students to fully engage with ChatGPT, promoting its use rather than limiting it, says Maynard.

Gabriel Ammirata, a junior majoring in Innovation in Society at the College of Global Futures, has a fair amount of experience with prompt engineering from previous courses but is excited to jump back into the subject to learn more about prompt engineering with ChatGPT-4.

“With the experience I have already, I’m excited to jump back into OpenAI to see what has changed in the past few months,” said Ammirata. “And being able to see other people’s projects or their ideas in the course is probably the best way for me to grow my skill set.”

The art of formulating effective prompts guides the AI to produce responses within a directed framework. This is the core learning objective of Professor Maynard’s course — teaching students to communicate effectively with AI to shape their inquiries to extract the most insightful and relevant answers for learning.

Guadalupe Bustamante, a senior double majoring at the Ira. A Fulton Schools of Engineering and the College of Integrated Sciences and Arts, has gained knowledge about neural networks and machine learning during her academic journey. As she prepares to enter her final undergraduate year, she believes understanding how to navigate AI systems like ChatGPT is an essential skill.

“Sometimes the ChatGPT software struggles to understand what I’m trying to say and I’m sure there are better ways I can specifically prompt to get better results,” Bustamante said. “New technology comes out all the time and we're going to have to adapt to it as it emerges.”

Tune into our next story on the course, which will shed light on how students' relationships with the AI chatbot evolved through the course, which ends on August 9. We will explore the transformative impact of new technologies on learning experiences, unveiling how they can spark limitless opportunities for lifelong education and growth.

And stay informed on how ASU is pioneering the field of technology-enhanced teaching and empowering students to be lifelong learners.

“I think we’ll find that despite all of the talk about chatGPT, we will start with a bunch of students where a lot of them are curious, but they're not really quite sure what that is or how to use it,” Maynard predicts. “And if we've got things right, by the end of the course, they will feel very confident in using this technology to achieve their own particular unique set of goals.

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