Midterm season is already upon us, and we could all use some extra support in how to best study. Maybe you’re already writing great prompts for AI, but are you using it to quiz yourself?
If you’re not writing great prompts, yet, make sure to read “Ask better questions to understand tough topics,” and get in on accessing ChatGPT Edu. It’s Duke’s licensed version of ChatGPT and is currently free for all undergraduates through the pilot period ending in May.
There are resources galore examining the good and the bad of AI, but in this series, we’ll provide tips and tricks to help you harness its power for academic success.
Tell AI you're preparing for a midterm that you have in two weeks, heavy on concepts from a certain chapter and watch it break things down into manageable pieces. The more details you give, the more useful the output will be.
According to Marta McCabe and Cheryl Beierschmitt of the Academic Resource Center, retrieval processes (such as self-testing) create strong, long-term retention of material.
Here are a few approaches that they suggest:
- Upload past exams, practice questions, and textbook problems to get questions most like your future test.
- Have it quiz you, generate practice problems, or help explain your mistakes: “Create a 15-question quiz based on the following notes. Include 10 multiple-choice and 5 short-answer questions. Make the difficulty medium.”
- Or you can prompt AI by saying:
‘Now act as a friendly, supportive tutor. Evaluate each of my answers, provide the correct answer when needed, explain the concept behind it, and give me a short strategy for remembering or solving similar problems in the future.’
- Include in your prompt the tone and level of encouragement you want AI to use, depending on how you want to study.
McCabe and Beierschmitt say self-testing is the most effective way to study as it enhances retention and understanding, especially compared to passive methods such as re-reading notes or highlighting passages in a textbook.
Just remember, AI can also produce wrong answers with absolute confidence, which is one of the most common pitfalls of large language models. This is why McCabe and Beierschmitt suggest asking it to provide links and citations to information provided to verify the accuracy and credibility of its claims.
Curious about how else you can use AI for academic purposes? Experiment with OpenAI’s ideas. It provides options ranging from how to get AI to pre-grade your essay, to helping you tailor your cover letter for a job listing.
In the next installment of ‘How to Make AI Your Spring Semester Study Sidekick,’ we’ll share tips on how to let AI break down and organize our increasingly hectic schedules.
By Katarina Dragasevic, '29
OIT Marketing and Communications Intern