There are many ways in which Generative AI can be used to aid your learning however before we dive into exploring these different options the first thing you will need to do is to check the policies that your institution or department have. Some of these polices will be quite open to students using AI while other will be far more restrictive. You should in all circumstance follow these policies.
Approaches to using AI in your Learning
Given the pace of development and scale of generative AI tools it would be impossible to list all the possible uses of generative AI, and while we will try to give a few concrete examples it is quite possible that these examples will date quickly. This section will therefore concentrate on how we learn and how the use of AI can impact on the learning process. The aim here is for you to consider your own learning process and reflect on the usage of generative AI has potential to be both useful but also harmful on these learning process.
When not to use Generative AI
Generative AI has the potential to be used in many different when it comes to your studies but before you start to trying out all of these different applications you should take Jeff Goldblum’s character’s advice in Jurassic Park:
“They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Generative AI can easily be used in a way that is detrimental to your learning. When it comes to learning the process is key. Learning can be difficult and time consuming but if you try to shortcut this process you can end up not learning anything at all.
Let’s illustrate this with some examples
Summarising and Encoding
Generative AI is really good at summarising documents, and you may be tempted to use a GenAI to summarise a long academic article so that you only read the key points