Higher Education · Artificial Intelligence

Prompt Engineering

What is it

Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting inputs to AI language models to reliably produce useful, accurate outputs — covering techniques like providing examples, breaking tasks into steps, and structuring instructions to reduce ambiguity.

Why it matters

As AI tools become embedded throughout software development, research, and everyday work, the ability to communicate effectively with them has become a genuinely practical skill — the difference between a vague prompt and a well-engineered one often determines whether an AI tool is actually useful for a task.

Exam tip

When a prompt produces inconsistent or poor results, add a concrete example of the desired output rather than just adding more descriptive instructions — showing a model what you want is consistently more reliable than only telling it.

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