I recently came across this post on Chat-GPT Prompts for Academics and I’ve been finding a lot of people suggest using Chat GPT for writing and rewriting. I’m still hesitant to use AI to write text — although I guess you could count Grammarly — but it works for some people, so I used this one sparingly

Rather than giving you a list of potential use cases, I’m just going to tell you how I’ve found AI useful over the last year as a professor.

First, I tried several different AI generators and Chat bots. Chat-GPT was my gateway drug and I paid the $20/mo. I figured it was a low cost considering the potential implications of learning AI early on. Recently, my University gave us free access to Microsoft Copilot. It’s a test now to see if the university will pay for a full subscription but I was hesitant to use it because of the potential tracking. Since then I’ve tried Claude, Perplexity, Chatdoc and Meta AI. Of all, I’ve found Perplexity to be the best. It not only provided results but in some cases provided links to YouTube videos. They also have a good iOS app with widgets.

1. Complex math calculations for grant budgets. I’m in the social sciences and managing an excel sheet can get complicated. I recently had to calculate salary and benefits of a staff position based on a set amount I could provide. I put in a simple algebra equation and got the results of how much it cost for salary and 20% in benefits (plus it showed the steps). This equation $a+(a*.2)=85000$ calculated a salary of $70,833.33 and benefits of $14,166.67.
2. Preparing multiple choice/true-false exam questions. I teach a big introduction class with 300+ students. To make grading easier for TAs, I need to provide multiple choice questions. But without fail, some students challenge the answers and got to their TAs for clarification. Thus, I used Chatdoc to upload each of the readings —and my powerpoint slides as PDFs — associated with the exam and included this prompt “develop 5 multiple choice questions from this text.” Generally, 2 or 3 of the responses are usable with minors and then I repeated the process with “true-false” questions until I get 10 usable questions and answer. Chatdoc footnotes the lines in the text where the answers derive so it allows the TAs to point students to a specific locations in the readings.
3. Produce a module for a class. I have a hands-on component for a class that includes creating a map using QGIS. I asked AI to develop a step-by-step exercise and it gave me a great roadmap. I then uploaded my specific project files to a google drive, made slight modifications and gave the exam to my students the next day.
4. Write a Letter of Recommendation. I use this one sparingly considering my hesitation with AI writing. It’s pretty easy for me to tell a letter that has been written solely with AI. However, I’ve found that uploading a CV and asking it to write a letter for a specific position at a specific organization is really good! I keep format of the letter and edit it heavily but it really helps make connections with past work/education and the current job.
5. Plan a conference. This is a big one. I actually wrote a prompt stating that I was planning an academic conference on a particular topic and asked who I should invite. Surprisingly about 75% of the names were actually the appropriate people in the field. I modified that list, made a tentative program outline based on specialty, and wrote a successful conference proposal. I’m sure the same would work great for a literature review or grant proposal too.

At the moment, my preferred AI is the free version of Perplexity. It works great but I may upgrade to the paid version once my subscription with Chatdoc expires so I can upload documents and query them. In the meantime I’ll keep exploring use cases.