Rhetorical Strategies for Prompting: Developing Prompt Literacies

Submitter: Heidi McKee, Miami U

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The experiment:

To effectively co-write with generative AI, students need opportunities to explore strategies for prompting, developing the prompt literacies they need to know how to use AI (see Selber, 2004, for discussion of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacies). In-class or as homework, working solo or in small groups, I ask students a variation of the following, tailored to each writing project: Please prompt [AI system] to help you complete [X writing project]t. We will focus on [X part of the writing process, and then I specify, invention, drafting, revising, copy editing]. As you prompt and re-prompt the system, please cut-n-paste (or screengrab) your dialogue. You [or you and your partners] will turn in in one file of your dialogues, providing annotations where you explain why you asked what you did, what you noticed in the system’s response, and how you further prompted. In brief class presentations, I ask individuals or teams to share and explain some of their more successful or unsuccessful. This sharing enables the students to learn from each other strategies and approaches for working with AI in a particular context. In addition, from this activity, as a class, you can also build a prompt library, if you wish. A repository of prompts helpful for particular types of writing. It can also be helpful to ask students to try prompting two different systems to compare responses.

Results:

Students responded positively to these activities: They like that it’s directly applicable to their project at hand, and they see it as developing rhetorical skills and knowledge that they may need in future academic and professional careers. They also appreciate the opportunity to share and learn from each other. I appreciate the flexibility and how it enables students to consider approaches for co-writing with AI in very context-specific ways. Effective prompting that produces writing tailored to audience, purpose, and context and, importantly, that is ethical and, perhaps, not as biased, requires a lot of dialogue and re-prompting. These scaffolded activities, done at different points in a writing project, are helpful. Prompt strategies we might use when copy editing are different than the strategies we might need when engaged in invention. Asking students to turn in annotated reflections helps them take the time to really dive in and look at what they’re asking the systems and what the systems are producing. One thing I know I need to do more of so as to make the critical reflections in the annotations more productive is provide more directed questions for students to consider in their prompt and dialogue analysis. In particular, I’ve found I need to ask more directly about bias and what’s included and excluded and who’s included and excluded in the system’s responses and in the students’ own prompts.

Relevant resources: Selber, Stuart A. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. SIUP.

Contact: mckeeha[AT]miamioh[DOT]edu