Prompt Engineering Template: Soft-Skills Micro-Learnings
In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis and shift towards strengthening soft-skills, especially in the corporate setting. With this shift, employees are looking for easy to consume and applicable content on a variety of topics, such as time and project management, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution. Therefore, with this increased need for micro-learnings on soft-skills in the workplace, I have set out to create a prompt engineering template to assist with gathering content. With this template, a L&D professional will be able to quickly create a complete micro-learning or segments of an e-learning course or instructor-led training for a rapidly changing workplace environment.
Analysis & Template Proposal
Project Focus Area: Increased demand for micro-learnings on soft-skills in the workplace
Intended Users: Learning & Development Professionals
Audience: Corporate Employees at various professional levels
Role of LLM (ChatGPT-3.5): The LLM will provide foundational content for the micro-learnings on soft-skills. The template will specifically consist of three main sections:
A background information/statement(s) section
A scenario/role-play exercise
Multiple choice questions(s)
Implementation Benefits: With this prompt engineering template, a L&D professional can quickly and efficiently gather content for courses and publish finished products in a relevant and timely manner. This template would allow for just-in-time learning and allow L&D professionals to focus their efforts on design vs. development.
Design, Revisions & Template Structure
As a starting point for my template, I decided to specifically focus on the soft-skill of time management and came up with two learning objectives:
Given a workplace scenario, the employee will be able to identify three strategies for time management and evaluate each strategy’s impact on productivity.
Given strategies on time management, the employee will be able to identify personal gaps and prepare a realistic plan to implement a strategy in one week.
Revisions: After doing further research on best practices for “teaching” soft-skills, I decided to revise my initial template to specifically consist of five main sections:
Background Information (Includes definition, importance, examples, references)
Pre-Assessment Self-Reflection (Learner can self-identify gaps and strategies)
Role-Play Workplace Exercise (Outlines strategies and benefits)
Assessment: Multiple-Choice Questions (Based on strategies)
Conclusion Paragraph and Post-Assessment Self-Reflection (Plan Preparation)
Workflow: I will be using “LLM Chaining” to connect the individual sections in the template and to ensure consistency and flow. I will initially ask the LLM to use both of my learning objectives to generate a background information paragraph, which will be used to create two pre-assessment self-reflection questions for the employee. Next, I will ask the LLM to generate three multiple choice questions based on the learning objectives. Then, I will ask the LLM to create a role-play exercise based off of the background paragraph and I will ask it to re-align the MCQs to this exercise. Lastly, I will ask the LLM to generate a summary paragraph based off of the exercise and revised MCQs as well as ask it to generate two post-implementation self-reflection questions.
Initial Template Structure
Revised Template Structure
Development
After deciding upon the learning objectives and revising the template structure based on feedback, I decided to make a visual map of what I would “ask” the LLM and the potential outcomes. Once I had a clearer understanding of the different components, I decided to start testing out prompts with ChatGPT. I initially decided to provide both learning objectives in the initial prompt, but I quickly realized that I was missing a lot of key information in the resulting background paragraph. I then decided to provide the LLM one learning objective at a time, and experimented with wording and order. I continued to provide the LLM one objective at a time for each section and started to notice how the results differed if I changed the order or wording. Once I reached the last section, I read through everything to see if the content was consistent and had a flow. I then started over a few times and continued to experiment with different phrases; I eventually found an order and wording that seemed to be transferable and make the most sense.
Challenges Faced & Solutions Implemented:
Keeping the template relatively “general”:
As a starting point for the template, I decided to focus on the skill of time management so that I could get a better understanding of the different components. However, I found myself adding specific words and phrases to the prompts that wouldn’t necessarily be helpful if I created a micro-learning on a different soft-skill. Whenever I caught myself going into too many details or adding specific phrases, I tried to zoom out and move along to a different section and then revisit the original section later on.
Writing the “right” prompts for the multiple-choice questions and the role-play exercise:
In the beginning, I found that the multiple choice questions and role-play exercise didn’t really make logical sense or were too easy. I tried to experiment with different phrases and wordings to better align the MCQs to the role-play exercise without repeating exactly what was mentioned in the exercise, but I did have quite a bit of trouble with that section. For the role-play exercise, I decided to add a few adjectives to the prompt to see if I could make it more challenging and engaging, but it took me a while to figure out how to go about creating a more relevant exercise.
Implementation
Working Template Using ChatGPT-3.5 (Time Management Example)
Background Information:
Prompt 1: Given the following learning objective, “Given strategies on time management, the employee will be able to identify personal gaps and prepare a realistic plan to implement a strategy in one week which will be assessed through a pre and post self-assessment.” please generate a paragraph on the definition and importance of time management. Please include references.
Prompt 2: Given the following learning objective, “Given a workplace scenario, the employee will be able to identify three strategies for time management and evaluate each strategy’s impact on productivity” please generate a background information paragraph and include references.
Prompt 3: Please combine both paragraphs into one summary paragraph and include references.
Pre-Assessment Self-Reflection and MCQs:
Prompt 4: Given this summary paragraph, please generate a 2 question reflective self-assessment.
Prompt 5: Given the second learning objective, please generate three multiple choice questions with four answer choices each and provide feedback for each answer choice on why the answer is correct or incorrect.
Role-Play Exercise:
Prompt 6: Given the summary paragraph, design an interactive challenging story-like realistic workplace role-play exercise that illustrates three scientific time management strategies and their benefits, and shows how to apply them. Please customize the exercise to _______ Company. The employee can choose right or wrong decisions, please provide feedback for each decision.
MCQ Alignment
Prompt 7: Please align the above multiple choice questions to cover the three time management strategies presented in the role-play exercise and their benefits.
Conclusion and Post-Assessment Self-Reflection
Prompt 8: Given the role-play exercise and revised MCQs, generate a short conclusion summary and prompt the employee to realistically apply one of the strategies presented.
Prompt 9: Given the conclusion summary, please generate a reflective post-implementation 2 question self-assessment.
