Prompting skill built by the user, and a widening repertoire of tools

Capacity building is documented at the institutional level as courses and certificates and at the national level as platforms. This record covers the competence that respondents report acquiring without any of these, and the distinction is worth preserving because the two do not describe the same thing. A course teaches what a tool is, whereas what respondents describe here is knowing how to work with one.

Three components recur. Prompts become specific and goal-directed rather than open. Extended exchanges are sustained rather than restarted, which respondents connect to an increase in trust. Tools become differentiated, with a movement away from a single general assistant towards a set in which each is used for the task it suits.

One account gives the practice its pedagogical significance. A student describes the effort of explaining to the model what it should do as sometimes constituting a learning experience in itself, and connects this to a firmer conviction that the manner in which they use the tool is effective. Articulating a task in terms sufficiently precise for a machine to act upon is a form of rehearsal, and this is the only point in the material at which a respondent identifies it as such.

Respondents also attribute part of the improvement to the models rather than to themselves, and the report treats the two explanations as distinct themes. The present record covers only the part respondents claim as their own.

Named by the report as one of the most frequently mentioned themes under change over the preceding year, with verbatim quotations from support staff, teachers and students in more than one country.