The Headlines
The Power of Prompts
How prompt engineering in AI can boost international student engagement?
By Gauri Kohli
Generative AI has opened new possibilities across many fields, including international education. With applications that go beyond its chatbot capabilities, AI can serve as a powerful tool for institutions to connect with students in more personalised and effective ways.
At the core of this change lies prompt engineering — the art of crafting precise input to guide AI toward desired output. As the number of international students pursuing higher education abroad surges, with nearly 8 million expected to go overseas by 2025, prompt engineering has the potential to prove transformative, allowing universities to move over traditional and generic outreach and create meaningful, interactive conversations with students globally.
“While still in its infancy, generative AI holds promise for making recruitment more efficient"
Boosting student engagement
AI-powered recruitment can address diverse students’ concerns, offer real-time visa advice, and explain campus culture in ways that resonate deeply. Using prompt engineering within AI-driven chatbots, live chat systems or messaging platforms, universities can craft conversations that make international students feel understood and supported, even before they set foot on campus.
Dr Joseph Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Tasmania in Australia, emphasises the valuable role generative AI can play in supporting students transitioning to a foreign university, a new culture and potentially a second or third language. He envisions custom chatbots providing students with insights into their destination and offering a seamless introduction to university life, going beyond the traditional FAQs page. This personalised interaction is crucial for international students often navigating language barriers, visa processes and cultural differences.
According to Dr Jules White, Associate Dean for Strategic Learning Programs and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University in the US, who has designed a free online course on prompt engineering for ChatGPT on the Coursera platform, prompt engineering offers a significant leap forward in providing personalised communication and support for international students to address language barriers and cultural differences.
By utilising prompt engineering, which has been termed as the probable top job of the future as per the World Economic Forum, universities can craft AI-driven conversations that address specific concerns based on a student’s background, region or academic interests. For example, an AI assistant could be prompted to provide detailed information about visa processes, scholarship opportunities or housing options tailored to the student’s home country or specific educational goals. “This level of personalisation not only improves the student’s engagement but also builds trust, making them feel more supported during the complex and often overwhelming admissions process,” explains Dr White.
Currently, universities such as Australia’s University of Sydney, Georgia State University in the US and Staffordshire University in the UK are among those opening up to the use of AI and prompt engineering for international students through chatbots and other ways.
Streamlining recruitment and admissions
Prompt engineering’s potential doesn’t stop at student engagement. It can streamline the entire recruitment and admissions process for universities looking to attract international talent. By reducing friction points, such as simplifying queries and offering real-time follow-ups, it can help institutions better serve students, making the path to admission much smoother.
“While still in its infancy, generative AI holds promise for making recruitment more efficient,” notes Dr Crawford. While AI is still developing, applicants are already using these tools to fine-tune submissions, giving them an edge in the admissions process, he says.
Generative AI’s applications go far beyond recruitment, extending into areas like assessment and academic support.
“AI-driven virtual assistants can help students prepare for exams like IELTS with mock tests and feedback, rivalling traditional training programs in cost and accessibility,” says Dr Crawford.
Dr White adds that in assessment and testing, AI can generate customised study plans or quizzes based on a student’s specific needs or learning pace, helping them improve in areas where they struggle.
Language training is a critical area where prompt engineering can play a key role. AI-driven tools can provide tailored language exercises, simulate conversations in real-life scenarios and offer feedback in real time, helping international students improve their language proficiency in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
As Josh Freeman, Policy Manager, Higher Education Policy Institute, UK, says, “We frequently hear about the value of generative AI for students for whom English is not their first language: I think effective prompt engineering can help students rephrase things to sound more fluid or natural, understand difficult passages, have difficult concepts explained to them and have an AI personal tutor in their pocket. Spoken conversations with generative AI are possible in different languages, allowing students to practice their language skills easily.”
Freeman also notes the potential of generative AI in assessments, such as summarising difficult texts or assisting with revision. However, he cautions against the misuse of generative AI by students to complete their work for them, emphasising the importance of critical thinking and the learning process.
Data-driven decision making
AI also offers universities valuable insights into student needs and preferences. By leveraging prompt engineering, universities can collect and analyse data from platforms like social media or student feedback systems. This data can then inform recruitment strategies, allowing universities to create marketing campaigns that are highly targeted and relevant to specific demographics.
“By assessing sentiment and trends real-time, universities can also better understand the needs and concerns of prospective international students, allowing them to adjust their communication strategies accordingly,” says Dr White.
If universities are using bespoke chatbots and collecting data on the types of prompts being used, they may have more evidence-based conversations with prospective students.
As Dr Crawford notes, “We have known for a while that students need to experience a sense of belonging on campus.” Quality interactions between students were consistently important to their sense of belonging in a study of over a million university students. The challenge of supporting belonging is a key limitation of an overreliance on generative AI to communicate with students, particularly when international students are typically joining a university community with a lower level of local social support.
Dr White believes AI’s natural language processing capabilities enable institutions to gather actionable insights with ease. For example, analysing comments from LinkedIn or other platforms can help universities refine their content strategies and adjust messaging to better resonate with prospective students.
Prompt engineering allows universities to tap into the most advanced natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and data clustering capabilities in the world, but in a way that’s incredibly easy to use. “Despite the simplicity of these interfaces, many people underestimate just how powerful these tools can be for AI-driven marketing and recruitment,” says Dr White.Streamlining recruitment and admissions
Prompt engineering’s potential doesn’t stop at student engagement. It can streamline the entire recruitment and admissions process for universities looking to attract international talent. By reducing friction points, such as simplifying queries and offering real-time follow-ups, it can help institutions better serve students, making the path to admission much smoother.
Future applications
Dr Crawford expresses hope for more bespoke chatbots and virtual assistants that help students build self-efficacy and resilience in the face of unlearning and learning new ideas and ways of being.
He envisions these tools aiding students from regions like India and China. “I am hopeful that, in Australia, for students coming from places like India and China (where study modality is much more didactic), that chatbots can help students develop competence in experiential, active, and relational pedagogies common in quality education here.”
As prompt engineering evolves, experts predict a widening gap between countries that embraced AI education early and those more hesitant. “Looking forward, I expect that the countries and institutions that promote prompt engineering as a tool for creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving will be the ones that see the most success in global competition,” adds Dr White.
While it is too early for universities to have fully integrated prompt engineering into their admissions systems, the potential is significant. “For example, it's currently impossible for most institutions to carry out interviews with all applicants. But AI analysis of interviews might make that possible, allowing universities to have much more data on the students they admit,” says Freeman.
He expects the use of prompt engineering by both institutions and students to become more sophisticated.
“International students use AI more frequently than home students or those from the EU,” Freeman notes. “This trend might make international students more proficient with prompt engineering, likely reflecting the use of AI to overcome language barriers,” he adds.