Estimated Time: 15 minutes
What you’ll learn
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Understand what prompt engineering is and why it matters for productive AI collaboration
- Apply six foundational prompting techniques to improve your AI interactions
- Identify common patterns that lead to successful AI interactions
- Troubleshoot and refine prompts when AI responses don't meet your needs
Video: Effective Prompting Techniques
(12 minutes)
This video explores practical skills for crafting effective prompts when working with AI assistants like Claude. We explain that prompt engineering is simply the practice of designing effective instructions for AI systems, combining familiar human communication principles with AI-specific considerations. We introduce six foundational techniques: giving context, showing examples of desired outputs, specifying constraints, breaking complex tasks into steps, asking the AI to think first, and defining the AI's role or tone. We also share troubleshooting strategies for when responses aren't quite right and highlight common patterns that lead to successful interactions.
Key takeaways
- Effective prompting combines clear communication principles with AI-specific techniques
- Six foundational prompting techniques:
- Give context: Be specific about what you want, why you want it, and relevant background
- Show examples: Demonstrate the output style or format you're looking for
- Specify constraints: Clearly define format, length, and other output requirements
- Break complex tasks into steps: Guide the AI through multi-step reasoning
- Ask the AI to think first: Give space for the AI to work through its process
- Define the AI's role or tone: Specify how you want the AI to communicate
- The "secret weapon": Ask the AI itself to help improve your prompt
- Successful prompting is iterative (and perhaps also collaborative with the AI!). Expect to refine your approach based on results
- Common successful patterns include providing clear task overviews, format specifications, explicit constraints, and relevant background information
Exercises
Reflection
Before moving on, take a moment to consider:
- Which of the six prompting techniques do you think would most enhance your current AI interactions?
- Think of a recent AI interaction that didn't meet your needs. Which techniques might have improved the outcome?
- How does understanding these prompting techniques connect to the Description competency from the AI Fluency Framework?
If you like, revisit Bad Prompt Makeover from the previous lesson to give these prompting principles a workout.
Lesson resources
6 techniques for effective prompt engineering
See how vague prompts can be transformed into effective ones with these real-world examples.
What’s next
In the next lesson, we'll explore Discernment, the third core AI Fluency competency. Both this Deep Dive and the lesson preceding it focused on how to communicate effectively with AI and how to practice good Description. Discernment addresses the equally important challenge of thoughtfully evaluating what AI produces in response—the other half of the conversation!
Feedback on this course
As you progress through the course, we'd love to hear from you about how you are using concepts from the course in your life, work, or classes and any feedback you may have. Share your feedback here.
Acknowledgments and license
Copyright 2025 Rick Dakan, Joseph Feller, and Anthropic. Released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
This course is based on The AI Fluency Framework by Dakan and Feller.
Supported in part by the Higher Education Authority, Ireland, through the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.