How to Learn Effectively with AI Tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are becoming increasingly popular in academic settings, offering students new ways to enhance their learning experience. There are many AI platforms available today.

Used responsibly and ethically, Generative AI tools can boost your learning skills and help you discover new ways to learn. These might include starting to read reference material for an assignment, summarizing academic sources, brainstorming ideas about a topic, writing an outline to organize your work, using AI as a 24-hour study tutor, and more.

Here are some helpful tips and examples from Student Academic Success (SAS) Academic Advisors on how to get started using AI.

Tip #1: Provide quality AI commands

One effective way to use AI tools is to provide clear and concise prompts. The Role, Task, Requirement and Instruction (RTRI) method is a useful framework for creating prompts that elicit desired responses.

However, it is important to understand that AI tools can produce inaccurate information, so be sure to exercise judgment and apply your personal understanding of the class content to ensure you are assessing the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated content.

Tip #2: Use AI to Plan and Set Learning Goals

To study successfully, it is essential to plan and maximize the time you spend studying. Generative AI tools can assist you with common approaches to doing this by helping you set goals and create study plans. They can also help you learn about time management techniques, tips, and study strategies. The following prompt contains two roles but still uses the same approach (RTRI).

Depending on the answers the AI ​​engine provides, you can further define your prompt, request more details, and create a study plan that best suits you.

Tip #3: Use AI as a Learning Tutor

You can easily review your course assignments using AI as a tutor. The roles will be tutor and student, the task will be to ask you questions and the requirements will be the things you want to be tested on.

You can follow this process and ask your 'tutor' to ask multiple choice questions, short answer questions, or even engage in discussion on the topic. You just need to adjust your prompt accordingly.

Tip #4: Use AI Tools to Brainstorm Ideas

Students often find it difficult to start an assignment. By giving AI a relevant role and the task of brainstorming on a specific topic, AI can give you a starting point for how to start the assignment and ideas for further research.

With detailed prompts and clear instructions, AI tools can generate ideas for you to explore. If you find some interesting clues, you can continue asking for more perspectives on the topic and dig deeper.

Use AI ethically and effectively!

There are many things to consider around the ethics of AI when you do your homework. It's easy to run into some ethical challenges when you start using AI for your homework.

1. One aspect is the reliability and quality of the sources you are using. AI will use any sources it has access to to answer a question. Sometimes these sources may be old, irrelevant, and not the ones your instructor recommended you use. If you find the information you are looking for from an AI, it is essential to reference the AI ​​tool you used. Referencing AI-generated content is considered plagiarism. This shows the reader that you are trying to pass off the AI's work as your own. Referencing an AI tool can lead to academic dishonesty.
2. Another ethical consideration is that AI can present inaccurate information due to the massive amount of data it processes. The algorithm generates an average answer to a prompt. The AI's response can ignore important perspectives on a topic and create bias in the content it produces. This bias can exclude certain groups or perspectives that are not mainstream or new.
3. It is important to evaluate the AI ​​tools you use, as they can compromise your privacy and security. AI tools use your content to train their machines, so that content is not completely secure or safe.

David Pac

Update 27 May 2025