GenAI for students

Information and resources, from Leiden University and beyond, to help you use Generative AI (GenAI) effectively, safely and responsibly in your studies.

Generative AI (GenAI) continues to be integrated into every stage of learning and research. It is important to understand its impact on your studies and to be able to work with GenAI in a responsible and safe manner.

This page provides general information about GenAI and your studies. You will also find a page with an overview of resources about GenAI, including prompt libraries and how to reference AI use.

Want to check out useful tools and information about GenAI for your studies? Take a look at the GenAI Resources page!

Go to AI Resources

What is GenAI?

The broad field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is preoccupied with training machines to simulate intelligent behaviour, without necessarily generating new content. It has been around for decades and is used in spam filters, recommendation engines and autocomplete keyboards.

When talking about ‘AI’, we usually actually mean a specific subfield: generative AI (GenAI). Generative AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence that focuses on the creation of new content – text, code, images, video, audio, or music – based on the huge amount of data it is trained with, the training data. The generated output is essentially the result of statistical analyses, as modern systems are trained to predict the next piece of a sequence, whether it’s the next word or a pixel in an image. Despite appearances, the model does not understand language, nor does it understand your context.

You can access GenAI in two common ways:

Chatbots interfaces: think of the more general tools like Copilot and ChatGPT; but also, tools specifically created to support research, such as Elicit or NotebookLM.
GenAI features integrated into other tools: think of AI search boxes in databases and AI ‘assistants’ in reference manager software.

GenAI in your studies

As a general rule, GenAI may be used in the early stages of research – for example, to support brainstorming or to inspire new ideas and search terms. The stages that follow (evaluating and analysing information; writing and referencing) include skills that are essential to your academic learning, and should therefore be done by you.

However, before using GenAI tools, make sure you check with your teacher or supervisor whether you are allowed to use GenAI. Faculties, teachers and supervisors all work with different learning objectives and curricula, which impact whether they allow or don’t allow the use of GenAI.

Moreover, you should consider for yourself: What do you want to learn? What would you like to gain from studying? Think about whether and how GenAI fits into your study motivation and goals.

Remember:

GenAI can only support, not replace, critical thinking.
GenAI is not infallible. You must critically evaluate GenAI tools and their output, like you would other sources.
You remain responsible and accountable for your work, also when you use GenAI.
AI comes at an ethical, social, environmental and human cost.

Using AI? Use the checklist!

If you are using AI, go through this short checklist:

☐ My teacher or supervisor has allowed me to use gen AI for this class and/or assessment.
☐ I understand how AI related to the academic integrity principles.
☐ I understand the limitations of AI and will reflect on this while using it.
☐ I will not input any personal, sensitive or copyrighted information into the tool.
☐ I understand I will have the sole responsibility and accountability of any work I do for my degree and/or course.
☐ I will appropriately reference the use of Gen AI in my work.
☐ I will evaluate gen AI output in the same way as any source.

Need help?

For any questions related to library skills – ask us a question! For use of AI within your course, please contact your Faculty and/or teacher directly.

Are you interested in thinking along about AI in your studies? Join the AI in Education Special Interest Group!