LibGuides: Studying with AI: Example Prompts

Asking AI to be a Study Buddy can be useful when preparing for an exam, presentation, or a written assignment. The AI outputs may be useful for inspiring further reading. Adapt the prompts below to your own circumstances. You may need to ask the AI tool follow-up questions.

Measuring scales with two weighing baskets showing one basket higher than the other

I am a UK student. I am writing an assignment. Your role is to check my understanding by asking me 10 questions on the theoretical framework, argument, structure, and conclusions of my assignment. Please base your questions in current research.

Please present open questions for me to elaborate.
Ask me one question at a time.
Please prompt me to answer with more details where necessary.
Please evaluate my performance at the end.

I am preparing for an exam on the endocrine system for the first-year physiology module of my nursing degree. This will be a one-hour exam in which I am asked to answer an essay style questions. Please help me to prepare for this exam by quizzing me with exam style questions.

I am an MBA student studying finance at a UK university. I am writing a 5000-word report on taxation and the oil industry in the North Sea. Please help me by asking me six questions on the argument and of my assignment. Please base your questions in current research and policy from a UK perspective. Ask me one question at a time. Please evaluate my performance at the end.

My third-year study group has been preparing for an assignment on leadership and management. Please help us to revise and prepare for our assignment by asking us twenty multiple-choice questions based on theories of leadership and management. Ask one question at a time. Please give feedback after each question.

If you are searching in a journal database, you may wish to run a detailed search involving numerous search terms. This is often called an advanced search on a database. If you have not come across an advanced search before, please read our How to Search Guide first, as this has more information about effective searching. Once you understand the key concepts, you can use AI to help you structure your search.

Copilot and ChatGPT are both good at structuring an advanced search string. You can use them to organise your keywords and synonyms into a Boolean search, add truncation, and to do phrase searching.

The prompt below is aiming to answer the question 'How can social media be used for marketing in sport?' If you want to use this prompt, substitute the words in bold with keywords and synonyms from your topic. You can change the number of keywords and synonyms to suit your search.

I am doing an advanced search in an academic database. My keywords are social media (including synonyms Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), marketing (including synonyms branding and promotion) and sport (including synonyms football, tennis, and cricket). Please format this into a Boolean search, truncating and phrase searching as appropriate.

Sometimes you may find that it does not successfully use truncation or phrase searching, so you may have to prompt the AI tool to repeat this part a second time. You may also find that it adds in additional synonyms which you might or might not wish to include.

Using an AI tool as a reviewer can be useful during and after writing an assignment. Remember to question any feedback from an AI tool and be prepared to use your own judgement. Also, consider accessing further resources at the Library, the Centre for Academic Writing, sigma, and the Digital Literacy Centre to help you improve your work.

Consider using the prompts below to check small parts of your writing and remember any use of AI will have to be documented in your assignment submission.

Text on a sheet of paper with a magnifying glass hovering over text in the bottom right corner showing a tick in viewer of the magnifying glass

I am a UK student. I have completed a draft and I am now refining the argument and structure of my writing. Please provide feedback on my writing using the following prompts:

Are there types of evidence I have not included that might be useful?
Are there any current issues which I have missed from my argument?
Is my structure clear? Have I signposted and signalled the argument throughout?
Does my introduction introduce the assignment effectively?
Does my conclusion adequately conclude the assignment?

Please also highlight, using comments in square brackets:

Where biases may be present in my writing.
Where my argument is unclear.
Where I have repeated arguments or examples.
Where my writing is descriptive and where my writing is critical or evaluative.

I am a UK student [with dyslexia][with autism][for whom English is not my first language] studying _____. I am composing a report/essay/presentation on _____. I have written a draft of my assignment, which I am now proofreading and refining my work to the standard of good academic English in a British context. Your role is to assist me by correcting small errors and highlighting large or persistent errors in my writing, while preserving the original wording and phrasing as much as possible. Do not comment on or change the content of my work. Specifically:

Do not change or highlight any text located between single quotation marks (APA style). However, please highlight instances where I may have missed a quotation mark or citation.
Correct spelling and grammatical errors, expand contractions, and use UK spellings. Report any words which I have consistently misspelled. I have difficulty distinguishing [homophones][prepositions][tenses][subject verb agreement] please underline instances of incorrect use.
My work is on/frequently references _____ and _____ please pay particular attention to the spelling of these words.
Remove repetitions of words or phrases where these are obviously made in error.
If a word or phrase is unclear or appears to be transcribed incorrectly, use context to suggest a change. Highlight this. Do not replace words or phrases that are already clear and accurate, even if a different word might seem more sophisticated or succinct.
Preserve abbreviations and acronyms.
Maintain the original word choices, sentence structure, tone, tense, perspective, and formality as much as possible. Do not substitute words with synonyms or alter sentence structures unless necessary for clarity or to reduce repetition.
Highlight any sentences over thirty words long and suggest points at which these could be divided.
Highlight points at which conjunctions might be removed or changed to improve the clarity of my writing.
Highlight any overuse or misuse of adverbs particularly fronted adverbs.
Add or remove articles, determiners as needed to make the text read more smoothly and naturally.
Ensure punctuation is used clear and consistent and to an academic standard throughout the text. In particular, highlight any instances where a question mark may be absent or misused.
Render your changes in bold so that I can check them and use square brackets to highlight any issues.
Do you understand?

Asking AI to be a Debating Buddy can be useful when you wish to improve the content and argument of your writing. The outputs may be useful for inspiring further reading.

The prompts below are examples which you can adapt to fit your circumstances. You may need to ask the AI tool follow-up questions.

I am a UK student. I am writing a reflective assignment. Your role is to guide me through this process. Please help me by prompting me with 6-10 analytical or reflective questions.

Ask one question at a time.

Use Gibbs cycle.

Prompt me with questions relating to additional issues such as ethics, methodology, or research rigour as these become apparent.

Conclude the session with a summary of our discussion.

I am a UK student. I am writing an assignment. I am now developing my work to make it more robust. Your role is to debate the weaknesses of my argument in order to strengthen my position.

Ask me ten questions in series which take opposing views, challenge my theoretical grounding, or use case studies with different outcomes.
Please note any ethical or methodological issues I may have overlooked.
Provide a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of my argument and provide a list of suggestions to improve my argument ranked in order of contribution, time to research, conceptual distance from my current position.

It is advisable to not use AI tools for your main search in a systematic review. The AI tools currently available are not completely transparent with their methodologies, and their outputs are often not replicable.

However, literature mapping AI tools such as Research Rabbit and Litmaps are helpful to find extra papers in your additional searching section, along with traditional techniques like forward and backward searching. If you add the details of an included paper to one of these tools, they will find related articles. This can help to capture material where the authors might have used different language not covered by the keywords in your search.

Systematic review tools, such as Rayyan, do have built-in AI functionality to speed up screening and other tasks.

Ensure that you fully understand how the AI tool operates and record your use carefully.

Learn more from: Systematic Reviews Guide

Studying with AI: Example Prompts

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