A better prompt states a purpose and a check. Use Role, Objective, Context, Task and Audit to turn a vague request into a sequence you can verify.
Video · 2:52Activity time is additionalStudent course
Your next moves
Make the lesson yours.
Before watching, write your first answer: Did you tell it what you actually need?
Watch the story. Pause when a choice or claim needs checking.
Open the Think First activity below and complete it before any AI use.
Revise your answer in your own words. Explain what you changed and why.
Your activity / Right here
Bring a notebook. Begin below.
The activity is included on this page. Work on paper or in your own document; keep your first attempt and the evidence you checked.
Warm-up: Dr. Q's Question
Did you tell it what you actually need?
My first answer: ________________________________________________
Mike's Mix-Up: The Flyer That Made Things Up
Made-Up Example.
Here is what Mike did on Monday afternoon:
1. He typed "Make a flyer for our fundraiser" and nothing else.
2. He did not give the AI a role or a goal.
3. He did not give it the club's real facts: the date, the price, and what the money is for.
4. He did not check the flyer against the club's planning sheet.
5. He almost printed fifty copies.
The made-up price alone would have cost the club real money. At the real price of $10 a car, the car wash brought in $520, which is 52 cars (see Carla's Walkthrough). At the flyer's $5, those same 52 cars would have paid only $260.
What went wrong? Talk it through with a partner, then write your answers.
• Which of the Five Steps did Mike skip? (Hint: more than one.)
• Which step would have caught the made-up date, price, and claim before printing?
• How is this the red pencil story again?
• Rewrite Mike's prompt using all five steps, in your own words.
Think First: The Five Steps With a Human Partner
No devices. Pen, paper, and a partner. About 20 minutes.
Remember the red pencil from Chapter 5? "Get me the thing from the other thing" became "grab the red pencil from the bucket on top of the stack of books on my desk." Now you will use all five steps, on a person.
1. Partner A secretly draws a simple picture: for example, a house with two windows, a tree on the left, and a sun in the top right corner. Keep it hidden.
2. Round 1. Partner A says one sentence, "Draw a house," and Partner B draws. No questions allowed.
3. Round 2. Partner A uses the Five Steps out loud:
• Role: "You are a careful artist copying a picture you cannot see."
• Objective: "Our goal is for your drawing to match mine as closely as possible."
• Context: "The picture is simple, with four objects on a plain background."
• Task: "Draw one object at a time as I describe it, and stop after each one."
• Audit: "When you finish, we compare, and you point out every difference you see."
4. Compare both drawings with the original. Count the differences.
5. Switch roles and try again with a new picture.
Write down which step made the biggest difference, and why.
Pause & reflect
What changed in your thinking?
Write one sentence in your notebook. Name what you checked, what you chose, or what you want to explore next.
Read the video transcript
Read along, pause, or return to an idea. This transcript follows the selected lesson video.
Hi, I'm Carla, an AI avatar.
Have you ever asked an AI for something and gotten
something else?
This week is about fixing that, with five steps.
First, the question.
Did you tell it what you actually need?
Monday after school.
Mike's robotics club has a car wash on Saturday,
and Mike offered to make the flyer.
He types: make a flyer for our fundraiser.
Six words.
He gets a bright, bold flyer.
Saturday, October tenth.
Five dollars a car.
Every dollar sends the team to the national championship.
He almost prints fifty copies.
Wait.
The car wash is October seventeenth.
We voted on ten dollars.
And we've never been to nationals.
It made up all three.
You asked for a flyer, and it gave you one.
It just had to guess everything else.
Rob, who wrote this book, lays out five steps for
prompting in his teaching slides.
In this book, they're Dr. Q's Five Steps.
Role: who the AI should be.
Objective: what you're trying to accomplish.
Context: the world it's working in.
Task: exactly what to do.
And Audit: check what comes back.
The first four steps shrink the error.
The fifth one catches what's left.
It's the step people skip, and it's the one that keeps you in charge.
Here's Mike's second try.
Be a careful designer helping a high school robotics club.
My goal is a one-page flyer, and every fact must come from me.
Here are the facts: Saturday, October seventeenth,
nine to one, ten dollars a car, and the money pays for
robot parts.
Write a headline and one sentence about the money,
use only my facts, and ask if anything is missing.
Then list every date, price, and claim,
and show me where each one came from.
You can prompt by typing, by talking,
or with files.
Text is the most precise.
Voice is fast, so say the five step names to yourself
before you talk.
With files, say what you uploaded and why,
ask the AI to summarize it first,
check the key numbers, and keep only what's relevant.
And when numbers are involved, use Dr. Q's favorite audit question.
A clean answer can still rest on the wrong number.
The audit is how you find out.
In the simulation in Rob's slides,
this is the step where the user catches a mismatch and
corrects it.
Here's a fun one.
Google's prompting guide says that,
based on what Google has learned from its own users,
the most fruitful prompts average around twenty-one words
with relevant context, but the prompts people try are
usually less than nine.
This week, you'll practice the five steps on a real person
first, then run them with a data file.
Think first, then prompt.
Grab a partner and a pen.
Before you use an AI tool
Follow your course or institution's rules. Use an instructor-approved tool that permits your age, and meet any required consent conditions. Keep names, contact details, school records, and other private information out of prompts. Use fictional examples when you can.
Learning without an AI account
Follow the demonstration, pause before each answer, and do the reasoning on paper. Discuss what you would ask, how you would check it, and which decisions would remain yours.
About the characters and voices
This course uses AI-created characters and synthetic voices. Carla is an AI avatar. They help tell the story; they are not real students sharing testimonials.
Designed for high-school and community-college learners. Choose examples from your classes, work, and everyday life. Keep your completed work in your course portfolio.
