You should always do your academic and research work work yourself, as this will reflect your own unique perspectives and ideas. 

But you may want to experiment with or even use some Gen AI tools as a supplementary means to improve, complement, support, enrich, deepen and develop your learning and understanding etc. When used in this way, you won't be compromising your original thought and creativity, academic and ethical integrity or your critical, research and writing skills.

You can adopt this approach to create text output - creating your own "AI Sandwich", where you:

1. use it to brainstorm, generate ideas, outlines and structures and / or for clarification of concepts, then 
2. do the work yourself to develop your own understanding, critical thinking skills, maintain academic / ethical integrity and your own creativity, then
3. use it again – but only if you feel you need further clarification, or to fine tune what you have done 

That way you are using the tools to get you started and help you improve your work, instead of using them to do your work! When you use this method, you are combining AI with your own creativity, to generate unique content relevant to your needs.

Fig 2. Image generated using Microsoft Edge's Copilot, powered by DALL·E from the prompt "create an image for that depicts an artificial intelligence sandwich with three layers of ingredients".

 

Here are some suggestions on how you can use AI tools, to complement your student, academic and research work.

• As a research assistant. Always cross reference / fact check output. We recommend that you use OneSearch and the Databases to do this.
• To help with search strings. Tip: Use our Composing a Search – Try It tab first to formulate a search string. Depending on the results, you can use ChatGPT (or similar) to check your search string and ask it if it can be improved.
• As a question factory - ask it questions to clarify topics and concepts.
• To create relevant and purposeful images for use in presentations (as we have seen in the Gen AI Tools tab).
• As an editing and proof reading tool: you can compare your own language choices with the AI output. 
• For coding assistance.
• As a personal tutor to generate quiz questions so you can test yourself.
• For planning purposes or creating personalised study plans.
• To clarify difficult to understand, or new concepts or to help you find alternative meanings of concepts.
• To summarise, explain and analyse complicated documents.
• As a debating tool to formulate arguments and counter arguments.  

Here are some DON'TS when it comes to using Gen AI: 

• Don't upload any work that is not your own, including LMS content, unit outlines, lecture/presentation slides, readings, journal articles, book chapters, etc. 
• Don't copy and paste AI generated outputs - it will constitute plagiarism if you copy/paste without quoting and including a formal citation.
• Don't use any AI tools to paraphrase your work for you - it will constitute plagiarism if you do.
• Don't rely on AI tools such as ChatGPT (or similar) to look for reliable and accurate information. 
• Don't share, input or upload anything which could be considered sensitive information.
• Don't compromise your privacy. Check the privacy policy for information on data collection, data retention or deletion, and data usage. You can look for settings on the tool to manage this. For instance, in ChatGPT there is the option to turn off chat history, so your conversations can’t be used for future training.
• Don't use it for unethical purposes. For more information on this, have a look at the Ethical Considerations tab.