Time management
Exam preparation
Studying in another language

Time management

Time management is an essential skill for academic success, helping you effectively balance coursework, personal commitments, and extracurricular activities. GenAI can be utilised in this context in a number of ways:

Break tasks down into steps

Facing a big project or looming deadlines can be daunting. GenAI can help make this feel more manageable by offering suggestions to break an overall objective into smaller, actionable tasks. By presenting a logical progression to achieve the overall objective, it can help make workloads more approachable and allows you to focus on incremental progress rather than feeling overwhelmed. GenAI is not the only approach for doing this, but can help if you are stuck. You can also do this for yourself or use another tool like the Skills Center Assignment Calculator, which offers step-by-step guidance for breaking down assignments into different stages and tasks.

Create schedules and study plans

Balancing academic responsibilities, part-time jobs, and social commitments can feel chaotic. GenAI tools can help bring clarity by analysing schedules and suggesting optimised plans that align with priorities and deadlines. While GenAI can create bespoke study plans and timetables, the ultimate responsibility for prioritising tasks lies with you. Use AI-generated suggestions as a foundation, but ensure your decisions align with personal objectives and academic goals.

Productivity coach

Staying focused for long study sessions can be challenging. Some GenAI tools can act as a virtual productivity coach, offering structured study plans and timely reminders to take breaks. These can also help you maintain a balance between productivity and rest, fostering sustained engagement without burnout.

Guidelines for responsible use of GenAI for time management

Take ownership of your plans

While GenAI can assist in organising tasks, the ultimate responsibility for setting goals and prioritising tasks rests with you. These AI-generated suggestions can serve as a foundation, but ultimately you must ensure that your decisions align with your personal objectives and academic goals.

Be flexible and adaptable

GenAI tools can offer structured plans but may not account for unforeseen circumstances. You may need to adapt schedules to reflect things that come up or shifting priorities. While plans can help keep you accountable, flexibility can be important as well.

Cultivate your own time management skills

Time management is a lifelong competency. Use GenAI to refine your strategies but also practice prioritising, scheduling and delegating tasks on your own to strengthen your decision-making abilities. If you use GenAI, pair this with other methods, including handwritten schedules or personal reminders, to create a balanced approach to time management. Remember to use GenAI as an aid, not a crutch. Maintain personal accountability for meeting deadlines and ensuring the quality of your work. Check out Skills Centre time management resources to help you develop your own skills and strategies for this, without GenAI.

Exam preparation

GenAI can assist you in a number of different ways when preparing for exams, including providing adaptive learning tools, mock exams, and personalised feedback. However, it is vitally important that you ensure that the information GenAI provides is relevant to your topic and that you fact check it, so that you do not study incorrect information.

Adaptive learning

You can use GenAI as an assistant for different approaches to studying. For example, you can use it to create flashcards from your notes or you can assign it the role of a tutor or interviewer and have a conversation with it about your chosen topic, asking it to identify areas that you need to study further. While this can be helpful, remember that the GenAI tool will not know exactly what you need to study unless you tell it, and it can output content that is inaccurate. While it might be a helpful starting point, there is a risk that you could end up studying material that is not relevant or correct. Make sure that you remain in control of your study process.

Mock quizzes and exams

AI-generated practice tests can help simulate exam conditions, helping you assess your knowledge and familiarity with different question formats. These tests help you self-assess your learning, provided that you focus on understanding your mistakes rather than relying solely on AI-generated solutions. Remember, as above, GenAI tools will not always produce tests that are relevant to your content, or 100% factually correct.

Simplifying complex topics

GenAI can break down challenging concepts into simpler explanations, helping you to understand difficult topics. This can be useful for helping you to reinforce foundational knowledge, but always ensure that you go back to the original source of your information to ensure of the topic from GenAI makes sense.

Instant feedback

GenAI can provide immediate feedback on practice questions, identifying knowledge gaps or areas for further study. Again, you need to critically evaluate AI-generated suggestions to ensure that they align with course material.

Guidelines for responsible use of GenAI for exam preparation

Take ownership of your learning

GenAI can be used as a supportive tool to guide your studies but ensure the effort to learn and retain knowledge comes from you. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your learning as well as the quality of the work that you produce. Be wary of inaccurate information and feedback from GenAI as well as the possibility that it may steer you in directions that are not as relevant to your topic. Ensure that you are specific and that you are in control of the material that you study and your academic goals.

Balance use of GenAI with other study methods

While GenAI can help your study efforts, combine it with traditional methods such as reviewing textbooks, handwriting notes, and participating in discussions to develop a well-rounded understanding. Check out Skills Centre resources for exam preparation and other study strategies.

Avoid shortcuts

Never use AI to generate answers for assignments or exams unless you are requested to. Instead, use it to clarify doubts, practice concepts, and reinforce learning. Use GenAI to enhance your abilities rather than replacing critical thinking and problem-solving efforts. Always remember, the ultimate responsibility for your success lies in your effort and dedication.

Studying in another language

GenAI tools can be helpful for those studying in another language or learning a new language by translating materials or acting as a conversation partner. However, there are a number of pitfalls to avoid when using GenAI for these purposes.

Translation

GenAI tools can translate content into a number of different languages, potentially making it more accessible for those who are studying in a different language. However, you need to be aware of several things when using it for this purpose. The accuracy of the translation may vary. Not only is GenAI better trained in certain languages than others, it is very possible that the original meaning of the text may be altered in a GenAI translation. Remember, these tools are not analysing the text and considering the most accurate translation, they are predicting the most likely translation. Equally, you should not submit copyrighted material to a GenAI tool to translate if it will become part of the training data and you do not hold the copyright. Finally, remember that if you are using it translate your own writing for assignments, you can only do this if it is authorised by the lecturer and if you acknowledge it - otherwise this is academic misconduct.

Conversational partner

If you are trying to learn a language and do not have someone available to practice with, you can assign the GenAI the role of a conversational partner or tutor and practice the language with it. You can ask it for feedback or to help correct mistakes. In this way, it can act as a learning aid, with you maintaining the effort of learning the language yourself.

Guidelines for responsible use of GenAI when studying in another language

Use GenAI as a supplementary tool and avoid over-reliance

Relying heavily on GenAI can hinder real-life language acquisition, particularly if you use it just to create translations for you. Prioritise human interaction and authentic language exposure where possible. Remember, you may not always have AI tools available for translation, including in the workplace, and will need to know the language yourself.

Be aware of limitations

GenAI tools often prioritise grammatical correctness in translations, which may not always reflect natural language use. These tools may also have limited cultural understanding and can struggle to convey nuances of cultural context and idiomatic expressions. These, along with other limitations in training, including bias and misinformation, can lead to translations that alter the meaning of the original text. It is therefore important that you always evaluate translations from GenAI to ensure their accuracy.

Focus on understanding, not output

Use GenAI to help identify areas for improvement and then actively work to understand the underlying grammar rules and language concepts yourself.

Academic misconduct

Using AI to generate essays or assignments without authorisation and proper attribution/citation/reference/acknowledgement is academic misconduct. If you use AI-generated text for any part of your work, ensure that you are authorised to do this and that you acknowledge it.

Example

It can be helpful to think through how you might use GenAI responsibly in realistic situations. Review the following scenario and points to consider:

Scenario:

You are struggling to translate a complex poem into another language. You use an AI translation tool to get a general idea of how to proceed, but you find that the translation lacks the full meaning and poetic style of the original.

How can you use the AI translation responsibly to improve your own understanding and to produce a more accurate and nuanced translation?

Only use the AI translation as a starting point and analyse the areas where it falls short. Use dictionaries and other resources to research specific words and phrases as needed to capture the nuance of the poem and rewrite the translation in your own words, aided by the AI translation, in order to maintain the artistic integrity of the original. Consult with a native speaker or language tutor for guidance if you are struggling to capture the nuances.

If you are doing this as an assignment, remember to ensure you are allowed to use AI for the task, or part of it, and acknowledge your use.

Consider your own language learning journey. Have you used AI tools? Was your use of these responsible? Was it beneficial? How might you change your use of AI (if you plan to use it) in the future to be more responsible and more effective?

Activity

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