{"id":11977,"date":"2024-02-27T14:33:54","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T14:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=11977"},"modified":"2024-02-27T19:01:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T19:01:35","slug":"prompting-engineering-or-ai-literacy-how-to-develop-a-critical-awareness-of-generative-ai-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2024\/02\/prompting-engineering-or-ai-literacy-how-to-develop-a-critical-awareness-of-generative-ai-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Prompting engineering or AI literacy? How to develop a critical awareness of Generative AI in education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Mari Cruz Garc\u00eda Vallejo, Digital Education Consultant and Senior Fellow at Advance HE <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prompting engineering and Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy are not, per se<\/em>, antithetic concepts. As a matter of fact, prompting engineering is part of a higher cognitive process: the ability of formulating a problem in a structured way and following a logical sequence of thought that provides AI conversational agents with clear instructions on the response or output that is expected from the agent. Prompting engineering belongs to a higher set of competences grouped under the umbrella term AI literacy<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I teach an ECTS module at a Spanish university that covers Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance learning and assessment, and the term <\/em>\u2018prompting\u2019 often appears in the bibliography of the module. It is difficult for me to translate the noun (or should I say gerund?) into Spanish in this context. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (2024), the verb prompt means \u2018to make someone decide to say or do something\u2019. Prompting then, for our purposes here, can be translated as the action of telling an AI chatbot what we want and how we want it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the article AI Prompt Engineering Isn\u2019t the Future<\/a>, Ogur Ali Acar, Professor of Marketing and Innovation at King’s College London, states that without a well-formulated problem, even the most sophisticated prompts will fail. Acar distinguishes three prompting methods to guide AI responses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Zero-shot prompting<\/strong>: This method involves presenting the AI agent with a task and no additional information. The agent must then rely on its own knowledge and reasoning abilities to complete the task.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Few-shot prompting<\/strong>: This method provides the AI agent with a few examples or pieces of additional information before presenting the task. This helps the agent to better understand the context and type of output that is expected.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Chain-of-thought prompting<\/strong>:<\/em><\/strong> This method is a more structured approach that guides the AI agent step-by-step through a logical progression or sequence of steps. This can be particularly helpful for tasks that require complex reasoning or problem-solving.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Teaching academics the different uses of GenAI to enhance their teaching practice involves asking the AI to tackle complex queries that require a chain-of-thought prompting as well as a certain degree of AI literacy. I usually present an example to my students, such as: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Imagine that you need to develop a new module comprising 20 ECTS credits based on the subject or discipline that you teach. Try to ask an AI chatbot (such as  Copilot, Claude, Bard or ChatGPT) to create the module using a chain-of-thought prompting. How would you tackle this task?…  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This example illustrates how prompting engineering requires both critical thinking and problem formulation (including problem-solving) to tackle a complex task. Both critical thinking and problem-solving, core skills that HE institutions aim to develop in their students, are also part of the set of competences that AI literacy comprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What exactly is AI literacy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    King\u2019s College London (2023) refers to the term AI literacy as an extension of existing critical thinking and digital literacies that seek to help students develop a critical awareness of GenAI models, how those models work, and their ethical, intellectual and environmental implications in HE. As a digital educator, I would extend such a definition by adding that AI literacy also involves developing a critical awareness in the following key areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n