New to AI? Start with your learning purpose.
Decide what you need to learn, whether AI adds value and what your assessment permits before choosing a tool.
Before your first interaction
- Learning purpose: Identify what you need to understand or practise, what you have already tried and the reasoning you need to develop.
- Does AI add value? Compare an AI interaction with trying the task yourself, consulting course resources or asking a tutor. Sometimes the appropriate decision is not to use AI.
- Assessment permission: Check the brief or explicit staff guidance before using AI. Ask staff if permission is unclear. Disclosure does not make prohibited use permissible. See assessment permission and disclosure.
- Privacy: Share only material you are permitted to upload. Do not paste personal, confidential, unpublished or other students' material. Check local guidance and the account's current data arrangements. See privacy guidance.
- Choose a tool: Use AI Platforms for current access links and account checks, or the Toolkit to investigate tools by task. Features and account arrangements vary.
- Interrogate and verify: Challenge assumptions, ask what is missing and compare alternatives with your own attempt. Check important claims against appropriate original or credible sources, including whether cited passages support the claim. Follow the detailed verification guidance.
A careful first prompt
I want to practise [learning goal]. I have already tried [my attempt]. Act as a study collaborator: ask questions, give hints and help me compare approaches. Do not complete reasoning I need to demonstrate myself. Use only material I am permitted to share. Flag uncertainty and claims that need checking; do not invent evidence.
Work in small loops: try something yourself, request feedback, question it and check it. Good prompting can improve the conditions for a useful response. It does not guarantee that the response is accurate or reliable.
For a fuller framework and downloadable templates, see the Prompting Guide.
Practice that keeps you thinking
- Attempt practice questions before viewing answers; check the answer key against course material.
- Explain a concept in your own words, then question any feedback you receive.
- Compare arguments, identify missing evidence and decide what to investigate.
- Use a presentation format that is useful or accessible to you, without assuming that a preferred format guarantees learning.
See study strategies for examples.
Working with selected sources
If uploads are permitted, a source-grounded tool can help you locate passages and generate questions. It can still miss material or misinterpret it. Asking for citations or clearer prompts does not prevent hallucinations.
Read the original source and check that it supports the claim before citing it. You remain responsible for submitted work.
See Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) for a product-specific example.
If the interaction is not useful
Restate the task, provide relevant permitted context or ask a narrower question. Check the response rather than assuming a more polished answer is more accurate. Stop using AI if it distracts from the learning task or if you cannot verify the help it gives.