Gen AI tools can be helpful for organising your ideas and supporting your understanding but remember, the goal is for you to do your own reading and note-taking. Gen AI should be used as a tool that helps you learn, not one that does the work for you.
In brief:
Uploading licenced content
You should not share entire copyrighted material like journal articles with Gen-AI tools, unless they are Open Access (freely available to the public). If you find a journal article or similar text in a via a Curtin Library database (such as ProQuest, for example), you cannot upload it to a Gen-AI tool as that breaches the licencing requirements. You can find out more about privacy considerations and copyright in our Gen AI guide.
Getting GenAI to do the work for you
It can be tempting to use Gen‑AI to summarise articles or lectures, or to make notes for you. You might also want to use it to do your critical reading. But reading and taking your own notes are important parts of learning. If Gen-AI does this work for you, you miss the thinking needed to understand and remember the material, which means you learn less.
Remember, you can use Gen-AI as a student at Curtin:
If you choose to use Gen-AI for reading and note taking, have a look at our example prompts below. Change them to suit your context and always check any output you receive.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in] and am reading a difficult journal article. Please help me understand the following concepts [add difficult words from the article, title or abstract]. Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Do not find the journal article and analyse or summarise it for me. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in] and am reading a difficult journal article. Based on the title of the article [copy/paste title], have a conversation with me about what the journal article might be about, so reading it will be easier for me. Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Do not find the journal article and analyse or summarise it for me. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in] and am reading a difficult journal article. Based on the abstract of the article [copy/paste abstract], ask me some questions I should be thinking about as I read this article. Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Do not find the journal article and analyse or summarise it for me. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in] and am reading a journal article with the title [copy/paste title]. Using the CRAAP method, have a conversation with me and ask me questions about the article that help me read it critically. Don’t do the work for me, just help me figure it out. Do not find the journal article and analyse or summarise it for me. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Use Goblin tools or similar tools to split up tasks such as reading and note-taking. For example, you could enter “Read and take notes on Chapter 3 of my textbook” and ask the tool to break this into smaller steps. This helps you manage your workload without having the tool do your reading or note-taking.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in]. I’ve written these notes for my assignment. The assessment is about [add a brief description]. Can you give me feedback on my notes and suggest improvements to make them more useful for writing my assessment. Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in]. I’ve written these notes for my assignment. The assessment is about [add a brief description]. Can you ask some guiding questions that help me decide on a structure for my assessment? Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in]. I’ve written these notes for my assignment. The assessment is about [add a brief description]. Suggest three ways that my notes could be organised so writing the assessment is easier. Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in]. I want to take some notes for my assessment. The assessment is about [add a brief description]. Can you provide me with a template and some guiding questions so I can take useful notes? Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.
Use one of the many podcast Gen-AI tools available, and ask it to make a podcast on a topic that you are studying, to make reading and learning the topic easier, or ask it to make a podcast about a topic using your notes. This can work well if you are looking for different ways than reading to study.
Act as a tutor who helps me learn. I am a university student studying [add what course you are in]. I have taken notes from readings/lectures etc. Can you use my notes and generate questions so I can test my understanding of the topic? Don’t do the work for me - just help me figure it out. Provide your answers in simple, informal language.