Quick Tip: AI Prompting By Cheryl Colan People illustrations by Storyset Sometimes the best take-aways are tiny. Blink and you'll miss them. In February, I attended Arizona CanvasConnect 2025 . I …

 By Cheryl Colan

People illustrations by Storyset

Sometimes the best take-aways are tiny. Blink and you'll miss them. In February, I attended Arizona CanvasConnect 2025. I admit I didn't learn a single new thing about Canvas at this conference. But I got some interesting ideas, connected with colleagues, and from the AI Literacy in the Classroom keynote by Ryan Lufkin, Instructure's VP of Global Academic Strategy, I got this great tip for prompting AI:

Tell it to slow down and give you the best answer.

Within any prompt to an AI tool, ask it to slow down and give you the best possible answer (not the fastest one). 

I've included this in various prompts with multiple AI tools and multiple types of tasks. I end up waiting noticeably longer for the output, but in many cases I get a better or more nuanced result. Give it a try, make some comparisons, and let us know if this works well for you!