AI Assist

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can be valuable tools for exploring research ideas and refining research questions. AI can assist in brainstorming sessions, providing relevant literature, and offering feedback on the clarity and feasibility of your research question. By interacting with an AI chatbot, you can quickly gather information and generate new ideas that might not have surfaced otherwise. 

If you are beginning your search, you could ask an AI chatbot, "What are some recent studies on active learning in higher education?" The chatbot can provide summaries and references to recent research, helping you to identify trends and gaps. Additionally, AI can help refine your research question by suggesting ways to narrow or broaden its scope based on existing literature. 

For example, one might prompt the chatbot with:

I am a faculty researcher at a large university examining the scholarship of teaching and learning. I am interested in examining if using asynchronous video feedback using tools such as Loom are more or less effective than traditional written feedback for engaging students and helping them to improve their retention of the learning material. Please develop for me 5 to 10 research-oriented questions that would use quantitative research to explore this problem.

Using the results, such as those presented in the figure below, you can begin to see different perspectives on exploring the research question. These ideas can help you see which questions are significant, clear, and researchable for your situation. As a reminder, chatbots make errors, so not everything they share is accurate, so critically judging the responses is important. For example, I asked ChatGPT to provide me with quantitative questions, but Question 6 is qualitative, so it is important to verify all the outputs you receive. Also, keep in mind the chatbot does not know your resources; however, by sharing insights, the AI tool can help you narrow your focus to a researchable project.

Incorporating AI tools into the research question development process can enhance your efficiency and effectiveness, allowing you to focus more on designing and conducting your study. Embracing technology in this way aligns with contemporary research practices and leverages the wealth of information available at our fingertips.