Artificial Intelligence makes our lives easier - As students, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using AI to get answers fast, to answer any questions we may have about any given topic. However, as students, our main goal is to learn as much as we can, so that we become true professionals in our fields, instead of professional copy-pasters from ChatGPT. This is why it is essential that we learn to use these tools in our favor.
We should use AI as a learning tool instead of relying on them to think for us. You know what they say, if you can’t beat em’, join em’. So in the spirit of joining the robots, this article gives you five ways in which you can leverage AI for your homework.
1. Time Management
If you came to study a graduate program, you usually take 4-5 classes each semester, and every class requires you to write essays, take midterms, finals, quizzes, among other things. It’s a lot of work, a lot of reading, writing, and all of this is extremely time-consuming. AI chatbots like ChatGPT can become our best friends in these scenarios.
For example, let’s say you have to read an entire chapter in one night, and write a summary about it. Instead of reading the whole chapter, you can ask AI about the most important points in that chapter of the book, and go from there.
It’s important you remember that the quality of the AI depends on the quality of what feeds it. Therefore, here’s a prompt you can use: Summarize [text you want to summarize] into 4 paragraphs with simple language to make it easier to understand.
2. Asking for Explanations
For subjects like Math or Science, sometimes a plain answer is not enough and we all know and hate the classic “show your work below.” This is where you can use AI as a learning tool.
Remember that AI is like having a very smart friend. You can ask questions and they will almost always give you an answer that helps you learn about the topic.
Instead of just looking for answers, it can be a really good tool for understanding how to really solve the problem at hand. The secret here is knowing how to prompt your question, and voilà! Now you have a better understanding of class material and homework questions without having to read 5 pages of your textbook.
A prompt that can be useful is: Pretend you are a [subject] professor and explain to me [topic] as if you were talking to a 12-year-old. Add a simile for me to understand better.
3. Studying
Everybody has different studying techniques, and you can use AI for every one of them. Are you a flashcard kind of student? You can ask ChatGPT for summaries or meanings of any key concept you need. It can also generate study questions for you to practice before an exam, and check your answers as well. Pro tip: Write everything down as you use AI, it will help you memorize everything, and enhance your studying experience.
If you are looking for a fun way to study, we recommend creating a quiz. Check out the one we did to study the periodic table of elements:
Prompt: can you quiz me on the periodic table and tell me if I'm right or wrong? 1 question at a time and we play until we've covered 10 different elements
4. Research
As students, peer-reviewed articles and academic papers become our best friends when it comes to citations and finding relevant information for our classes. In almost every essay you write, you will be required to cite at least one academic article to back up your claims. This is where AI steps in. Instead of reading through numerous articles you think might relate to your topic, and constantly using ‘command F’ on your computer to find the one quote you need, ChatGPT can give you multiple articles on your exact subject, and even summarize them for you. Remember to read and understand the content instead of copy-pasting everything. Plagiarism is always something you should avoid for both legal and learning purposes.
Prompt: I need to find information on [topic] for a research paper that will be [# of words] and must include [number] online sources.
This prompt will give you links that you can use to get information for your paper and verify that they are indeed good and reliable sources of information. And if you want to visit the library, just remove the word ‘online’ and it will display offline sources.
5. Languages
Learning a new language is always a struggle, and for international students, it is something we can’t escape. AI is a very smart and efficient engine to use for word definitions, grammar checks, and even translations. However, this is one of the easiest traps to fall into.
Remember we want to use AI to our advantage. Therefore, use it as a learning guide, not a free pass to your exams, especially because it is extremely easy for professors to tell when you used AI generated text, or thought about it yourself.
We suggest you write your papers and use AI to make them better. However, if you want the AI to help you learn better English as you write, use this prompt that Kevin Sims generated:
You are a grammar checker that looks for mistakes and makes sentence’s more fluent. You take all the users input and auto correct it. Just reply to user input with the correct grammar, DO NOT reply the context of the question of the user input. If the user input is grammatically correct and fluent, just reply “sounds good”. Sample of the conversation will show below:
user: grammar mistake text
you: correct text
user:Grammatically correct text
you: Sounds good.
Reply “understand” if you understand.
These are just some of the ways to make AI your study buddy, instead of being the reason you get called to the dean’s office. Feel free to explore and play around with AI to find out everything it can do. It’s not going anywhere, and we should all embrace it as a society. So try it on your next assignment.
However, remember academic integrity is always a priority if you want to make the best out of your learning experience here in Canada.
Ready to make AI your ultimate study buddy? Join our Slack community today to connect with fellow students who are leveraging AI for academic success. Share your tips, tricks, and experiences with using AI as a learning tool, and learn from others who are on the same journey. Whether you're a pro at using AI or just getting started, our community is here to support you.
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