Student Guide to ChatGPT: Using ChatGPT effectively

Using ChatGPT effectively

Learn what it's useful for and how to prompt effectively.
Remember to always verify the information it gives you.

Different courses will have different policies

Check with your instructor for each course to find out the policy on using ChatGPT and similar tools.

What is ChatGPT good for and not good for?

Remember, you'll always need to verify the information, because ChatGPT will sometimes make things ups (known as "hallucination.")

What is it good for?

• Brainstorming ideas
• Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and keywords for searching in library databases.
  See Generate Topics for Your Research Paper with ChatGPT.
• Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand
• Summarizing and outlining
• Asking questions (be sure to fact check the results). You can ask many, many questions without fear of being judged.
• Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language)
• Helping write or debug computing code

What is it not so good for?

• Library research (not yet). For now, it's best to use the Library's catalog or the Library databases.
  
  Note: You may want to try one of these tools that summarize web search results with generative AI. 
  • Perplexity AI   
  • Microsoft Copilot 
  • ChatGPT has a new web search feature. Click on the globe icon in the search box to activate it.
    
    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.
     
• Asking 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

What is prompting?
Simply, it's what you type into the chat box.

The way you prompt makes a huge difference in the output that ChatGPT gives you. So it's worth learning some tips.

Always verify the information it gives you.
Think of ChatGPT as your personal intern. They need very specific instructions, and they need you to verify the information.

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.

Tips for writing effective prompts

1. Give it some context or a role to play.
2. Give it very detailed instructions, including how you would like the results formatted.
3. Keep conversing and asking for changes. Ask it to revise the answer in various ways.

Examples

1. A role 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.
    
2. 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.
    
3. 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.

More tips for ChatGPT

1. When you want to change the subject, start a new chat.
    
2. 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.
   
   As of March 2025 there is a new feature in ChatGPT where you can let it reference previous conversations. You can activate this feature by clicking on your name, Settings, Personalization. Look for the button called "reference chat history" and turn it on. (Turn on "reference saved memories" first, to see the button).
    
3. 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.
    
4. 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.
    
5. 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.

Learn more in this book.

Tutorials on ChatGPT and Generative AI

To learn more, try our new tutorials about ChatGPT.  They contain short videos (3 min or less), and quiz questions for self-review of what you learned.

1. The technology behind ChatGPT
2. How does ChatGPT aim to prevent harmful use?
3. What is generative AI?
4. Using ChatGPT effectively
5. Creating multimedia with AI tools