This project looks at a skill that very much relies on practice: prompting AI to generate a document. And it looks at a type of writing that requires knowledge of business correspondence formats, content, and tone: evaluating generated text to see if it meets the business’ needs and follows the expectations of business writing in terms of content, tone, and format.
In this final project, you will practice writing and refining prompts to guide AI tools in creating a professional progress report. You’ll then edit the AI-generated results to improve tone, content, and format before submitting your final version.
Note: Unlike earlier projects in this course, Project 4 does not include a peer review. You will draft, refine, and submit your final progress report directly after completing your AI prompting attempts.
Instructions
Step 1: The Setup - Plan For Your Progress Report
First, you will decide some details for the progress report you will have AI write for your boss about the status of a project you are managing.
You oversee a team of 10 people who are setting up a work event featuring a guest speaker (you choose who this speaker is). You are coordinating two specific events during the week this person visits:
- One event for the public
- One for the entire company
Choose your company (for example, State Farm, Google, or Apple) and decide on the specific events and speaker.
You’ve now finished five months of the six month time for the project, and your boss has asked for a progress report as you head into the last month of preparations. Please write a 2-page progress report email that provides information about what the whole team has done the first five months, what is ongoing, and what still needs to be done. You’ll want to determine as many details as you can before you begin prompting AI to help with the report. Reference the annotated progress report example
if needed.Step 2: The Process - Generate Using AI
In order to do this, you should begin with using a Generative AI tool. I recommend either ChatGPT or Claude.AI. You can try a combination of both, or use one you know well.
- First Attempt: You’ll begin with prompting the tool to generate a progress report, and give it the necessary information for it to provide you detailed results. Take a look at what it generates.
- Copy both your prompt and the AI-generated text into a document and clearly label each section.
- Write a reflection (at least 150 words) below it about what is working or not working. Consider:
- How can you improve your prompt?
- Would a different tool be better?
- Second Attempt: Then, refine your prompting, and attempt generating a text again.
- Again, copy the prompt and AI-generated text, followed by another reflection about what has improved or gotten worse. Pay attention to the content, tone, and format.
- Third Attempt: Refine your prompting and try this one last time.
- Copy the prompt and text and write about how close this version is to a final draft. Consider:
- What stands out as exemplary?
- What still needs improvement?
- Copy the prompt and text and write about how close this version is to a final draft. Consider:
You can try AI more than three times. I simply ask you to document 3 tries to see how your prompting improves the results. If you share your first, twentieth, and fortieth attempts, that’s fine.
Step 3: Edit and Finalize
If your final attempt with AI is not perfect (it probably won’t be), you should at this point edit the AI-generated text to make it stand out: often, tone and content are things that are obviously lacking in AI-generated text.
As the last item in the project, label the last version of your text the "Final Text" to be graded.
Your project will come in with this format:
- Prompt 1
- Prompt 1 generated text
- Prompt 1 reflection and what to change
- Prompt 2
- Prompt 2 generated text
- Prompt 2 reflection and what to change
- Prompt 3
- Prompt 3 generated text
- Prompt 3 reflection and what to change
- Final Text of Progress Report
Requirements
- Length: Approximately 2 pages for the final progress report
- Tool Use: Minimum of 3 AI-generated attempts documented
- Reflection: at least 150 words after each attempt
- Format: Combine all components into one doc, docx, and pdf file
Grading Criteria
Your project will be assessed on:
- Documentation of all prompts, AI responses, and reflections
- Evidence of improvement in your AI prompting
- Clear, professional editing in the final version
- Tone, content, and formatting appropriate for a business progress report