Selecting objective-aligned, high-quality course content is crucial for guiding students toward their learning goals and ensuring a meaningful educational experience. By leveraging AI tools, faculty can streamline content creation while maintaining alignment with course objectives. The 3Ps framework—Prep, Purpose, and Parameters—offers a structured approach to ensuring that AI-generated content is both effective and targeted. This guide introduces specific AI prompting techniques to help faculty optimize course content, ensuring quality, relevance, and alignment with learning goals.
Persona prompting instructs the AI to take on a specific role or identity (e.g., instructional designer, expert in assessment), often with defined knowledge, tone, and values. This approach shapes responses to align with the goals and nuances associated with that persona’s expertise.
Tip
Start by setting a persona that reflects both subject matter expertise and pedagogical knowledge. This will guide the AI to produce content that resonates with your course’s goals, as well as incorporate tone and appropriate language.
Example Prompt
“You are an expert curriculum developer and subject matter expert in business writing. You develop quality objectives, topics, and content for courses and your content always aligns with learning goals.”
When to Use this Prompt
Start with persona prompts to ensure the AI’s content matches the course objectives and adheres to best practices in educational content development.
Before generating content, define what makes the material high-quality and aligned with the course objectives. High-quality content should be clear, specific, and connected to the learning outcomes.
Tip
Define the desired qualities of the content (clarity, inclusivity, alignment with objectives) and ask the AI to adhere to these standards.
Example Prompts
“Here are the key characteristics of a well-structured online lesson on data analysis that ensures clarity, engagement, and alignment with learning goals….”
When to Use this Prompt
Before diving into content creation, establish the foundation for the type of material you want the AI to generate.
Providing specific instructions will ensure the AI focuses on the desired content scope, key concepts, and depth. This reduces the risk of ambiguity and ensures the material is directly applicable to the course objectives.
Tip
Define the content’s scope and focus clearly, specifying which topics, themes, or concepts need to be included.
Example Prompts
“Create a lecture with 12 slides on the principles of supply and demand in economics. Focus on real-world examples and ensure that each concept is clearly explained, with visual aids to support diverse learning. Here are the 12 topics for each slide….”
When to Use this Prompt
Once the persona and definition are set, use clear, specific instructions to guide the AI’s content generation.
Constraint-based prompting allows you to set boundaries for length, complexity, or focus, ensuring that the content remains concise and relevant.
Tip
Limit the scope of the content by specifying word count, the complexity of examples, or the number of key points to be covered.
Example Prompts
“Generate a 500-word summary of the main theories of motivation in psychology, focusing on self-determination theory and its application in workplace settings.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use when you need concise, focused content, especially for shorter lessons or specific course segments.
Role-specific prompting instructs the AI to adopt the viewpoint of a particular user or learner profile, ensuring the output is accessible and inclusive for diverse perspectives.
Tip
Ask the AI to evaluate the content from the perspective of various learners (e.g., non-native speakers, learners with disabilities) to ensure that it’s accessible.
Example Prompts
“Review this content on climate change from the perspective of an international student. How can the language be simplified or made more inclusive?”
When to Use this Prompt
After content is generated, use role-specific prompts to check for inclusivity and ensure the material is accessible to all students.
One-shot and two-shot prompting help clarify the AI’s understanding by providing one or two examples to illustrate the expected format, tone, or level of detail. One-shot prompting provides a single example to guide the AI, while two-shot prompting offers two contrasting examples to clarify nuanced differences.
Tip
Provide examples that match the format and tone you want the content to reflect.
Example Prompts
“Here’s an example of a lesson on branding strategy that includes key terms, definitions, and case studies. Use this format to create a lesson on brand management.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use one-shot or two-shot prompting when you want the AI to replicate a specific structure or tone for content.
Template-based prompting involves guiding the AI to create a reusable framework or template for responses based on specified variables. This technique supports faculty by generating consistent feedback templates that can be customized for different types of content.
Tip
Ask the AI to generate a template that includes essential components, such as key concepts, learning activities, and assessment methods.
Example Prompts
“Create a lesson plan template for teaching environmental sustainability, ensuring it includes an introduction, key concepts, a case study, and assessment strategies.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use when developing standardized content that needs to be customized for different topics or units.
Self-interrogative prompting encourages the AI to reframe the task or ask questions, ensuring it’s on the right track and fully aligned with course goals.
Tip
Ask the AI to clarify its understanding of the content’s purpose and confirm its alignment with course objectives.
Example Prompts
“How do you interpret the task of creating content for a module on leadership? Are there any gaps in the course objectives that I need to address?”
When to Use this Prompt
Use this after summarizing or generating content to ensure alignment with learning outcomes.
Summarization-based prompting allows the AI to provide an overview of key topics before diving into detailed content. This helps to clarify the course’s scope and objectives from the outset.
Tip
Request an initial summary of content topics to visualize and organize your course structure.
Example Prompts
“Provide a summary of the key topics that should be covered in an introductory course on business ethics, including key ethical theories and contemporary issues.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use early in the content development process to brainstorm or organize key course topics before finalizing details.
Positive reinforcement emphasizes the value of high-quality content and motivates the AI to produce work that contributes to student success.
Tip
Remind the AI of the positive impact its content can have on student learning and encourage it to focus on clarity, engagement, and accuracy.
Example Prompts
“Your attention to detail in this task impacts students’ success in the course.”
When to Use this Prompt
When generating content that needs to foster student growth and engagement.
Chain-of-thought prompting helps break down complex tasks into smaller, logical steps. This technique helps the AI build coherent and detailed content that progresses logically from one idea to the next.
Tip
Use chain-of-thought prompting for multi-step tasks, such as creating a series of lessons that build on each other.
Example Prompts
“Complete this in order. First, create a series of lessons on time management that starts with understanding priorities, second follow up with practical techniques, and third, add a student project to apply these concepts.Provide a step-by-step simple list of your considerations as you crafted this content.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use when creating content for assignments or lessons that require a structured, progressive approach.
Iterative prompting refines content through repeated rounds of feedback and adjustments. This technique ensures that the content is continuously improved to meet learning goals.
Tip
After receiving initial content, refine it by prompting the AI to clarify or expand on certain sections to improve clarity and alignment.
Example Prompts
“Refine this lesson on decision-making by adding more real-world examples and clarifying the differences between types of decision-making models.”
When to Use this Prompt
Use when you need to fine-tune content after the initial generation phase.
Self-prompting involves asking the AI to create its own prompt based on its understanding of the task, ensuring that its approach aligns with the course’s goals.
Tip
Ask the AI to generate a prompt for the content creation task and ensure it matches the desired learning outcomes. Add in other strategies to the prompt request.
Example Prompts
Act as an expert prompt generator. You engineer prompts that would yield the best response.Here is the desired prompt…
When to Use this Prompt
Use when creating complex or specialized content, ensuring the AI fully understands the goals before generating output.
Conclusion
By utilizing these prompt engineering strategies along with the components of the 3Ps framework—Prep, Purpose, and Parameters—faculty can leverage AI to develop high-quality, aligned course content. Experimenting with these techniques allows for continuous improvement and supports the creation of engaging, relevant content in online education.
