In an era dominated by algorithms and automation, it was a simple book recommendation that unexpectedly stood out: Mastering AI Prompt Engineering by Frahaan Hussain and Kameron Hussain (2024). As an educator and academic dean, I thought it was typical that I would gravitate toward reading a book about Artificial Intelligence, for one, I am an AI enthusiast, and educators still read books. For some context, I probably used AI more often than most for work and accelerated my usage as students began using it more and new challenges and policies emerged.
The book recommendation was a good one for several reasons. Hussain and Hussain helped me render a clearer picture of how AI works and why informed prompt engineering, asking AI what to do, is the recipe for successful engagement with AI in the workplace. Skilled prompt engineering is the path to better output, and for me, this matters. Most of us who use Chat GPT and Gemine, Claude, etc., regularly, and even some of the early adopters, have something to learn here, including how to get better output, but also gaining insights on how something is created and how much thought went into “prompting” AI. For example, I now may ask a student, “I see you used AI and that you referenced it correctly based on institutional policy, but can you share your prompts, your output, so I can understand the evolution of your work?”
Hussain and Hussain’s book inspired me to share it with my graduate students who take my courses usually from all corners of the world. Though not assigned as a reading in the leadership course, it became a topic of conversation and a reference point in posts and messages. Why would this not very long book become of interest to a group of students in Dubai, Cairo, Phoenix, DC, NYC, and Riyadh? Beyond it being an easy-to-follow manual of sorts, it was the fact that it was a “real book” and somehow this gave a group of mostly 30- and 40-somethings taking graduate courses something very real and concrete to think about. The book was somehow validating for this newly arrived tool.
Of course, many books have been written and even more journal articles published on AI, but holding a book and reading a quick passage in a Zoom class talking about AI and education reminded me that we educators won’t be replaced, and neither will books, not right away. And for all of us, it felt good that while at Acacia University, we are all over the planet and fully online, but our graduate programs have never lost sight of the most important things: life-long learning, the centrality of our students, technological innovation, curiosity, and continuous improvement.
