Should Students Use ChatGPT? The Best Way to Leverage AI

You’re working on an assignment for your math or physics course. Instead of struggling through each problem, you snap a screenshot, upload it to ChatGPT, and type, “Solve this for me.” Within seconds, you get a detailed answer, no effort, no frustration. For many students, it feels like magic: a personal assistant available 24/7, ready to help with anything.

But here’s the catch: the way many students use ChatGPT disrupts the learning cycle, the essential process of trying, failing, trying again, and eventually succeeding. Getting only the final answer skips the failure stage, where most real learning happens. While AI tools like ChatGPT are now inevitable, we can leverage them wisely to enhance our intelligence and the learning experience. Make AI serve you, not replace you.

Let’s take a closer look at how to use ChatGPT the right way.

Mastering ChatGPT: Be Smarter, Not Lazier

Now is the time to amplify your outcomes by having a personal teacher with unlimited resources available 24/7. Instead of wasting time hunting for resources or relying on your teacher to give you extra work to practice, you can do it yourself. I’ve broken down the use of ChatGPT for students into four different practices. Review them, apply them in your own courses, and adapt them to match your study goals and habits.

Ask for detailed explanation

You sit down through a calculus lecture, and the professor is explaining the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. The lecture ends and you still don’t get it. This is when ChatGPT becomes the hero. You can ask ChatGPT to become your calculus teacher and give a step-by-step explanation of the concept. You can keep asking it to elaborate until the idea becomes clear.

Do ask ChatGPT to breakdown a complex concept into simpler steps.

Don’t settle for final answers without understanding the process to getting there.

Request Practice Questions

Once you’ve mastered the conceptual side of a topic, the next step is applying it through practice. Many students rely solely on teachers or tutors to provide practice problems, but that can take time, and the number of questions you get is often limited. With ChatGPT, you can take a question that your teacher assigned you, ask ChatGPT to give similar questions to practice on. You can keep solving and asking for more questions until you fully grasp the material. Just remember: always check your answers with a teacher, tutor, or trusted resource, because ChatGPT can make mistakes, especially when solving complex math or physics problems.

Do be specific. Provide ChatGPT with the type of questions you want it to give you

Don’t only rely on ChatGPT’s practice questions, your priority is your teacher’s assigned questions.

Brainstorm and Plan Assignments

We’ve all been there, hours go by as you stare at a blank page, unsure how to start an assignment or essay. For many students, it’s the starting point that creates the biggest block; once you get moving, the rest often flows more easily. ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for breaking through that initial barrier. You can use it to brainstorm ideas, explore different perspective on the topic, and dump all your ideas to help you organize them into a structured outline.

Do ask ChatGPT to arrange your thoughts and draft a rough outline of the assignment.

Don’t copy-paste an entire ChatGPT-generated assignment and submit it as your own.

Check and Refine Your Work

Once you’ve completed your work. It’s time for ChatGPT to review and polish it. You can ask it to check your steps, highlight mistakes, or suggest clearer, more polished ways to present your answers or paragraphs. This isn’t about rewriting everything; it’s about refining what you have already produced. Just remember: before you move to this step, make sure you fully understand what you’ve written or solved. ChatGPT can help sharpen your work, but it’s still your responsibility to know and stand by your own answers.

Do compare ChatGPT’s suggestions with your own work before you submitting your work.

Don’t automatically accept every correction without checking if it fits your assignment.

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Example of Using ChatGPT to Understand Integration by Parts:

So far, we’ve just been taking the talk. let’s put ChatGPT to the test and see how it explains an actual topic.

• Prompt: Try using a descriptive and clear prompt when talking with ChatGPT.

• Response: ChatGPT will give you a detailed breakdown of the concept with a solved example.

Best Responses Come from Back-and-Forth Conversations with ChatGPT

The more you engage with ChatGPT, the more precise and helpful it becomes. Keep asking follow-ups and clarifying questions to get the best results.

The Dark Side of Misusing ChatGPT

Now it’s tome to shed the light on some negative consequences of misusing ChatGPT. While it can serve as a powerful learning tool, it’s not a calculator or an expert problem-solver for every subject, it mainly struggles with complex word problems in areas like Strength of Materials, Dynamics, or 3D Trigonometric Applications. Such problems require understanding of the situation, drawing a diagram, and applying the right methods which is beyond what ChatGPT can reliably handle. There’s also a thin line between using ChatGPT as a support tool and unintentionally engaging in plagiarism. Here is a guide on how to avoid plagiarism while using ChatGPT.

Finally, misuse of AI, especially during the COVID lockdown, has left a lasting mark on education. Some students used AI tools mainly for cheating, and getting results they didn’t truly earn. This has contributed to widespread grade inflation, forcing universities to raise minimum GPA requirements and making grades a less reliable measure of a student’s hard work.

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Final Word

Now that AI tools like ChatGPT have become part of students’ everyday lives, the challenge is no longer if we should use them, but how to use them wisely. Going forward, hopefully you will not be using ChatGPT looking for shortcuts, but to improve and challenge yourself to reach your full potential.

ChatGPT can be a powerful ally in that journey, helping you break through confusion, sharpen your skills, and push past roadblocks. But like any tool, it’s only as useful as the way you use it. Used wisely, it can elevate your learning; used carelessly, it can hold you back.

So, as you approach your next assignment, ask yourself: I am using ChatGPT to actually understand the material or just to shortcut my work volume?