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Artificial Intelligence | ChatGPT for Instructors

Information on Generative AI for Instructors

Benefits & Drawbacks

Where ChatGPT is Helpful

  • Brainstorming ideas;
  • Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper. See Generate Topics for Your Research Paper with ChatGPT.
  • Creating keywords for library database searches;
  • Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand;
  • Summarizing and outlining;
  • Asking questions (be sure to fact check the results).  You can ask a million questions without fear of being judged;
  • Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language);
  • Helping write or debug computing code.
  • It can be useful for  summarizing web search results. When you use these, be sure to visit the linked web pages themselves, rather than only reading the summaries. 
  • Remember, you'll always need to verify the information, because ChatGPT will sometimes make things up (known as "hallucination.")

Where ChatGPT is Not Helpful

  • Library research (not yet). For now, it's best to use library databases or Google Scholar. Consider instead trying sites that summarize web search results with generative AI (ChatGPT 3.5 since it does not integrate current web search information):

     

  • You may also want to try one of these tools that combine generative AI with academic searching, in order to summarize and find more sources with semantic searching. These tools aren't as complete as library research databases or Google Scholar, but they can help you find additional resources.
     
  • It's not good for any information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, and so on). This is because of its tendency to sometimes make up answers, but still sound very confident.

Prompting

Prompts Make a Huge Difference in ChatGPT Results

What is prompting?

Simply put, it's what you type into the chat box.  How you ask ChatGPT impacts the information it returns.  Experiment:  Ask it to write something on a 12th grade level, or a graduate level.  

  1. Tips for Writing Effective Prompts
  • Give it some context or a role to play.
  • Give it very detailed instructions, including how you would like the results formatted.
  • Keep conversing and asking for changes. Ask it to revise the answer in various ways.
  1. Prompt Examples

A role prompt could be, "Act as an expert in [fill in the blank]." 

  • Act as an expert community organizer.
  • Act as a high school biology teacher.
  • Act as a comedian.

An example prompt:

  • Act as an expert academic librarian. I’m writing a research paper for Sociology and I need help coming up with a topic. I’m interested in topics related to climate change. Please give me a list of 10 topic ideas related to climate change.

Example of changes: Keep conversing until you get something useful...

  • Now give me some sub-topics or research questions for [one of those topics]. And give me a list of keywords and phrases I can use to search for that topic in library databases and Google Scholar.
  • Or...I didn't like any of those topics. Please give me 10 more.

  1. Always verify the information it gives you.

  2. Think of ChatGPT as your personal intern. Like an intern, it needs very specific instructions, and it needs you to verify the information.
  3. ChatGPT sometimes makes things up. That's because it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing. It's not designed to know facts.

More ChatGPT Tips

 

  1. When you want to change the subject, start a new chat.
  1. It will remember what you've said in the course of a conversation, so you don't have to repeat everything again. Just continue like you're talking to your intern.

    Memory across conversations is optional
    As of March 2025 there is a new feature in ChatGPT where you can let it reference previous conversations. If you want to activate this feature click on your name, then Settings, Personalization. Look for the button called "reference chat history" and turn it on. (Turn on "reference saved memories" first, to see the button).
     
  2. Choose an output format. In addition to paragraphs it can give you a table, a bulleted list, ascii art, multiple choice quiz questions, emojis, computer code, and more.
     
  3. In ChatGPT you can see a history of your conversations. You can go back to a previous conversation and continue it. If you like, in the settings you can delete your history and turn off the saving of future history. You can also export your history and save it on your own computer.
     
  4. Remember, don't enter any personal, private data in ChatGPT. Learn more in How can I protect my privacy when using ChatGPT?, which also discusses other models.