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Prompt Design For Beginners

Make the robot work for you.

Prompt Design For Beginners: Workshop Description

  • This asynchronous workshop provides a gentle introduction to the art of designing effective prompts for OpenAI's large language model (LLM), ChatGPT-3.5. 
    • Learn how to communicate effectively with ChatGPT by gaining practical skills in crafting and refining questions to extract meaningful responses from this generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool. 
    • No knowledge of coding is required.
       
  • A gentle reminder for students:
    • Before using generative AI tools like ChatGPT for assignments, please consult with your instructors to confirm if they are permissible for use. 

  •  This workshop was created by Laura Briggs during her term as the UVic Data Science Librarian. Questions about this workshop can be addressed to askus@uvic.ca.

Intended Audiences

Prompt design for everyone! No previous knowledge of the topic or coding experience is required. 

This workshop is designed for: 

  • Faculty Members
  • General Public
  • Graduate Students
  • Undergraduate Students
  • University of Victoria Staff

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Explain the basic process of an interaction with ChatGPT.
  2. Understand some of the limitations and ethical challenges associated with ChatGPT
  3. Apply six effective techniques to writing prompts
  4. Know how to troubleshoot and improve their prompts
  5. Recognize when and how to integrate ChatGPT into their own projects.

Pre-Class Activity

This activity should take you five minutes. 

Create an account for ChatGPT 3.5.

  1. Create a free account with OpenAI to use ChatGPT by going to https://chat.openai.com/auth/login
  2. Click Sign up.
  3. Use your preferred email address and select a password. 
    Sign up form to create an account for ChatGPT
  4. Navigate to your email account to verify your email address.
    Look for a message that has the subject line, "OpenAI - Verify your email".
    Verify your email address to create an account to use ChatGPT

Learning Activities

Explore the instructional topics listed in the left-hand menu under "START HERE". Each module includes Your Turn! activities at the end for hands-on skill practice.

Credits

This tutorial guide was originally created by Laura Briggs in 2023.

Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.