How to use ChatGPT to do research for papers, presentations, studies, and more

When you're assigned research papers, the general topic area is generally assigned, but you'll be required to identify the exact topic you want to pick for your paper or research. ChatGPT can help with the brainstorming process by suggesting ideas or even tweaking your own.

My prompt: I have to write a research paper on "Monumental technological inventions that caused pivotal changes in history." It needs to be ten pages long and source five different primary sources. Can you help me think of a specific topic?

You can then follow up with ChatGPT to ask for further information. You can even tweak these topics with an angle you like more, and continue the feedback loop until you have a topic you are settled on.

Once you have selected a topic, you can ask ChatGPT to generate an outline, including as much detail for your assignment as possible. For this example, I used the first topic that ChatGPT suggested in the previous step.

My prompt: Can you give me an outline for a research paper that is ten pages long and needs to use five primary sources on this topic, "The Printing Press and the Spread of Knowledge"?

ChatGPT generated a 13-point outline that carefully described the areas I should touch on in my paper, as seen in the photo (above). You can then use this outline to structure your paper and use the points to find sources, using ChatGPT as delineated below.

Now that you have a topic and outline established, you can ask ChatGPT about the topic of your project and ask it to deliver sources for you.

My prompt: Can you give me sources for a ten-page long paper on this topic, "The Printing Press and the Spread of Knowledge"?

When I asked Bing Chat the same question, it provided sources with clickable links that you can use to access the material you need quicker. For that reason, I would use Bing Chat for this step.

This tool can also be used when you need to find a specific example to support your topic.

In both cases, you can ask ChatGPT to help you identify a specific event or time period, and incorporate those details in your article.

My prompt: What was a time in history when implementing technology backfired on society and had negative impacts?

Within seconds, ChatGPT generated 10 examples of incidents that I could weave into the research as a rebuttal.

Creating a page of the works you cited, although valuable and necessary for integrity, is a pain. Now, you can ask ChatGPT to generate citations for you by simply dropping the link or the title of the work, and asking it to create a citation in the style of your paper.

If you used something other than a website as a source, such as a book or textbook, you can still ask ChatGPT to provide a citation. The only difference is that you might have to input some information manually.