Academic Care Update: How AI Can Support Student’s Research
This week starts the first of a mini-series on how to utilise AI well, and appropriately, to enhance learning. As I mentioned last week, the use of AI is deeply embedded in this term’s Academic Care Program, with the girls in Year 7–Year 10 spending time looking at the benefits and pitfalls of the technology. A useful tool, and one that is fast evolving, it’s essential that both parents and student upskill in how they utilise AI to support learning.
AI as a Research Tool
This week I presented to Year 9 on the way that AI, particularly LLMs (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, etc), can assist students when presented with research tasks. It is important to emphasise that AI should always be considered a tool to enhance learning, rather than just a tool to find or develop a simplistic answer. Moreover, the girls were reminded that all work submitted must be their own, with all sources cited, and that it was their responsibility to check the accuracy of anything generated by AI.
Find below some of the core takeaways from my presentation, which highlight some ways that AI can complement the research process:
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Asking better questions: help can be found in refining a research question, or assisting in developing sub questions to explore.
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Summarising and Synthesising Research Documents: after reading through documents, AI can assist in creating summaries of key ideas and points.
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Organising ideas and planning: AI can help turn your own notes into a mindmap or essay plan, which can then be built upon to respond to a longer question.
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Understanding complex concepts: is there something within a question or research project that you don’t understand? AI can help build base knowledge, before further research can be embarked upon.
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Practicing Critical Thinking: AI can assist in source analysis, evaluating differing perspectives and organising arguments and counterarguments.
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Reviewing Research Work: AI can assist in the editing process, helping inform the author if they have engaged with the task criteria or needs of the project.
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Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism: AI can assist in the referencing process, and help to highlight times where potential plagiarism has occurred.
Whilst not an exhaustive list, hopefully it provides a start; a way of dipping one’s toe into the water of AI. My suggestion would be for parents to work collaboratively when exploring any AI platform, and whilst there are pitfalls, the technology has the potential to strongly support the research phase of learning.
– David Posker-Hill
Acting Deputy Head of Senior School – Academic