Game changers: A generative AI prompt protocol to enhance human-AI knowledge co-construction

The democratization of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including ChatGPT, has sparked the interest of business practitioners given their ability to fundamentally change the way we work. While AI tools are positioned to augment human capabilities, their effective implementation requires the skill to understand where, when and how to best utilize them efficiently. Furthermore, meaningful engagement with the content produced by generative AI (GenAI) necessitates the intricacy of appropriate prompt engineering to optimize the learning process. As the field of GenAI continues to advance, the art of developing impactful prompts has become a necessary skill for harnessing its full potential. This research develops an AI prompting protocol through a constructivist theory lens. Based on the principles of constructivism, where individuals assimilate new knowledge by bridging it with their existing understanding, this research suggests an active engagement process in the human-AI co-construction of knowledge through GenAI. The goal is to empower business managers and their teams to construct effective AI prompts and validate responses, thereby enhancing user interaction, optimizing workflows, and maximizing the potential outcomes of AI chatbots. (c) 2024 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).