Student Guide to ChatGPT

Remember to always verify the information it gives you.

ChatGPT can be a useful tool for learning, brainstorming, and understanding complex ideas—as long as you verify the information it provides. ChatGPT is not a database, so it may occasionally invent facts, citations, or details.

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

What is it good for?

• Brainstorming ideas

• Narrowing or refining research topics. See Generate Topics for Your Research Paper with ChatGPT.

• Generating keywords for use in library databases or Google Scholar

• Explaining concepts in simpler terms

• Summarizing or outlining information

• Asking questions (be sure to fact-check the answers)

• Translating text (not fluently in every language)

• Assisting with writing or debugging code

What is it not so good for?

• Finding scholarly sources. For now, it's best to use Library search, Library databases, or Google Scholar.  See I can’t find the citations that ChatGPT gave me. What should I do?

• Trusted health, legal, or financial guidance

• Any information where mistakes would have serious consequences

• Generating accurate citations (it may fabricate them)

• Note: You may want to try one of these tools that summarize web search results with generative AI. 
  • Perplexity AI   
  • Microsoft Copilot 
• 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.

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

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.

Learn more in this book (available online with your UCM SSO).

• This book offers strategies and practical guidance for crafting prompts. Includes tips and tricks, along with general concepts.

1. Sometimes it gets confused if you change topics in the middle of a conversation. 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.
    
3. Don't ask ChatGPT (free version) for a list of sources. It will often make them up. Instead use library search, library databases, or Google Scholar.
   See  I can’t find the citations that ChatGPT gave me. What should I do?
    
4. 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.
    
5. 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.
    
6. Remember, don't enter any personal, private data in ChatGPT, because OpenAI may use your input to help improve the model. The free version is a research experiment.  If you don't want your data used to help improve ChatGPT, you can turn it off in the settings. Go to your name, then Settings, then Data Controls and turn off, "Improve the model for everyone."

This guide is based on the guides produced by the University of Arizona Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.