Important Considerations Before Using Generative AI in Your Studies

Key Skills: Critical Thinking and Structured Thinking

The rise of GenAI underscores the need for key skills such as critical and structured thinking, which are essential for academic success.

Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking is about evaluating information, ideas, and arguments in a systematic and logical way. This means questioning assumptions, analysing evidence, and looking at different viewpoints to come to well-thought-out conclusions. With GenAI able to generate sophisticated texts, it is more important than ever to critically assess these outputs. When using ChatGPT to help with writing, it is crucial to review and refine what it produces.

Structured Thinking

Structured Thinking involves organizing information logically and categorizing it effectively. It is about breaking down complex ideas, spotting patterns, and applying this organized approach to gain new insights and solve problems. While ChatGPT can provide brief explanations, it might not always deliver in-depth analysis. Structured thinking helps lay out a foundation that ChatGPT can then flesh out, aiding in the transformation of concise ideas into well-expressed text. This allows students to focus more on the structure and substance of their work.

Think about your learning goals and how best to incorporate GenAI into your studies to enrich your learning experience. In this new AI-driven age, abilities like critical thinking, structured thinking, evaluating texts, and creating effective prompts are increasingly important. Knowing how to create prompts that lead to useful and accurate outputs from GenAI tools like ChatGPT is key.

If opting to use GenAI tools (assuming there are no specific restrictions from the university/programme/module coordinator), you must take on the responsibility of verifying the accuracy and reliability of any AI-generated output, such as text or code. This diligence is necessary to avoid the pitfalls of accidental plagiarism, copyright issues, and ensuring the credibility of your work. It is vital to ensure that AI-generated content is trustworthy and reflective of accurate findings before submitting it as your own work, to prevent issues related to factual inaccuracies, plagiarism, copyright breaches, or biases.

Attribution: Adapted from Gimpel, Henner et al. (2023) Unlocking the power of generative AI models and systems such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT for higher education: A guide for students and lecturers, Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences, No. 02-2023, Universität Hohenheim, Fakultät Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Stuttgart, https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:100-opus-21463 – available under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Are You AI Ready? Investigating AI Tools in Higher Education - Student Guide Copyright © 2024 by SATLE 'Are You AI Ready?' Project Team, University College Dublin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.