How do I use AI?
To use AI, you’ll need to create a prompt. Think of a prompt as the instructions you give to your AI assistant. The more detail and clarity you provide, the better your chances of getting exactly the result you're looking for. Ready to dive into AI
1. Pick Your Protected AI Tool
Learn about the Protected AI Tools You Can Use.
2. Ask It a Question
Start by asking the AI what you want to know or understand. Be clear and direct!
- For Students: "What are some good study strategies for preparing for a cumulative final exam in a STEM course?"
- For Faculty: "What are some innovative active learning strategies that have shown success in large undergraduate lecture courses?"
- For Staff: "What's the standard procedure for requesting a new software license for a department, and what documentation do I need?"
3. Give it a Task to Do!
Once you've asked your question, tell the AI what to do with that information.
- For Students: "Summarize the key points from my research paper in bullet points, specifically focusing on the methods section."
- For Faculty: "Draft a brief email to my department chair outlining the most important discussion points for our upcoming curriculum review meeting."
- For Staff: "Based on our budget data for the last quarter, list the top three spending categories and suggest ways to reduce costs by 10%."
4. Go Big: Combine Questions & Tasks!
Combine your question and your task into one super-prompt! This gives the AI all the context it needs and tells it exactly how you want the final answer.
- For Students/Researchers: "I'm working on my literature review about how climate change affects coastal areas. Can you please review these five attached research articles? For each one, tell me the main findings, any research gaps, and what future work they suggest. Then, put all that into a coherent outline for my literature review section, including some good topic sentences and transitions, formatted just like an academic paper."
- For Faculty/Advisors: "What are the common challenges international students face when adjusting to campus life at CMU? Please generate a list of 5-7 actionable tips that our student support services could share, formatted as a short bulletin board notice."
- For Staff/Administrators: "We need to understand our STEM program enrollment trends from the past five years. Please analyze the attached spreadsheet data, pinpoint any major shifts we should know about, and then summarize the key takeaways in a concise report format, ready for presentation at our next faculty senate meeting."
