A curated collection of prompts for the things UMD faculty, staff, and students actually need to do — from teaching and analysis to planning, communication, and everyday productivity.
This Prompt Library is a curated collection of tested prompts designed to help students, faculty, and staff effectively use AI tools across academic and administrative tasks.
By providing structured examples and best practices, the library reduces the learning curve and helps make AI use more accessible, reliable, and aligned with university goals and standards.
The live UMD library groups prompts into User Prompts, which are the instructions you give the model directly, and System Prompts, which shape how the model behaves across an interaction.
A user prompt is the input or instruction provided by the user to guide an AI system's response. Clarity, context, constraints, and examples all influence the quality of the output.
Break down complex academic language into clear, accessible explanations without losing essential meaning.
Create diverse, thought-provoking questions and assignments that help measure learning and encourage deeper understanding.
Surface research-backed strategies to engage diverse learners and improve outcomes through contemporary pedagogy.
Turn abstract concepts into more interactive, game-based lesson ideas that are easier for students to engage with.
Support deeper reading and interpretation by surfacing themes, perspectives, and critical angles beyond first impressions.
Build playlists for studying, exercise, focus, or downtime with recommendations tailored to mood and activity.
Generate meal-planning ideas aligned to specific health goals, nutrition targets, and everyday constraints.
Support distributed teamwork with ideas for collaboration, communication, and team-building in remote settings.
Design sleep schedules and morning routines aimed at improving focus, energy, and consistency.
A system prompt is a set of behind-the-scenes instructions that define tone, style, boundaries, and rules. It establishes the framework within which all user interactions are handled.
Guide an AI assistant to help educators explore digital tools, online learning practices, and classroom technology adoption.
Frame a model to generate real-world math problems that connect introductory concepts to practical application.
Set behavior for an assistant that creates weekly meal plans balancing nutrition, budget, and preferences.
Define an assistant persona for style and wardrobe recommendations aligned with confidence, goals, and daily life.
The prompt itself is only half the story. The approved service and the data classification of what you paste into it matter just as much.
Before using any prompt with university information, confirm which approved tool fits the data you want to use. The catalog is where you check access, classification, and whether a service is approved for campus work.
If a prompt touches teaching, research, student information, or administrative work, the Guidelines page is where to check expectations around acceptable use, attribution, and boundaries.