Enhancing Thesis Writing with AI: Tools and Tips for Academic Success (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Writing your thesis used to be this really lonely academic process where you sit in a library or wherever you want to be and you're just like, oh, oh, what am I writing? Oh, this is so sad, am I writing that the right way? But now with AI tools, it's become easier than ever to keep that creative juice flowing and use it as like a research assistant as you're writing. This is what I would do. The first thing I'd like to do is head over to ChatGPT or you could even use Perplexity or whatever sort of like large language model you like. But this is why I use ChatGPT is because if I'm undertaking a large project, I'm going up here and I'm clicking on Customize ChatGPT and it's this dialog box that is really, really useful because here you can add custom instructions. So here it says, what would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses? And they've got some thought starters there. So if you're starting a big research project like writing your thesis, writing a dissertation, you should actually go in and change how you want GPT to interact with you. So where are you based? That's not super important. What do you do for work? Now that's very, very important. What you do for work at the moment is you are a thesis writer. You need to be that specific to make sure that it gets all of the information in a useful format for you. And then you've got what are your hobbies and interests? Not super useful. And then what subjects can you talk about for hours? What are some goals you have? So here you just need to talk about the fact that you're writing a thesis, that you need help writing that thesis by bouncing off ideas and sort of like correcting any academic writing, that sort of stuff. And then down here, how would you like ChatGPT to respond? How formal or casual should ChatGPT? Now this is super powerful. You can say, I want it to be academically focused. I want academic language that is suitable for a thesis or dissertation. How long or short should they be? You want longer responses if you're writing your thesis or dissertation, because then it will give you more to work with, more to think about, more to add, more to subtract, more to edit. That's the stuff you really want. How should you be addressed? It doesn't matter. Should ChatGPT have opinions on topics or remain neutral? You don't want any opinions. You want to stick to fact-based stuff. So you can say in there, stick to facts. Stick to scientific data. Do not give me opinions on anything that you think about this writing. That sort of stuff should all be included in your customized ChatGPT option, and I haven't seen this anywhere else other than ChatGPT, which is why it is my go-to at the moment. So this is the sort of stuff you can do. So make this paragraph sound more academic. Now as you're writing, when I was writing my thesis, this one, where is it? Look at this. I would sit there for hours thinking about how to look the best way to write this, and I would get stuck in my own mind, ruminating over the same sentences. Here, now you can use ChatGPT as that kind of writing assistant. So make this paragraph sound more academic, and then I post it in the paragraph, and it's given me an option. Figure X illustrates the morphology of silver nanowire only and silver nanowire carbon nanotube, nanocomposite films, blah, blah, blah. And so I obviously had to come up with the first draft. The thing about your thesis is you can't get ChatGPT to write about your results unless you put those results in as a figure, but even then, you need to be the one that really drives that first draft, in my opinion. And so now we've got this, the AFM data presented in blah, blah, blah. So that will make it sound much more academic, and you can go through and be like, yes, I like this bit, I don't like this bit, but that's how I would use it. The second way I would use ChatGPT is by making sure that I'm using the appropriate academic language. Now, when you're entering a research field, there's all this language you need to get used to, but it doesn't come naturally, or at least it didn't to me. So if I wanted to talk about a certain aspect of my study, quite often I'd have to go and read about it to go, oh, that's how they explain it. Now, that's super easy because you can use a prompt like this. What is the best way to describe the process of delamination? So I wanted to say that something delaminated, but I want to know about the language, about the use of different terminologies that I could use in my own report or my dissertation. So here, delamination is the process where layers in a composite material separate. So I need to make sure that I mention composite material and that it's likely to distress and fatigue or imperfection. So all of these are ways that I can talk about delamination that I didn't know about before. Stress concentration, that is very important for me. Fatigue, propagation, separation. So those are the steps that I need to make sure I address if I'm writing about delamination of my transparent electrodes. And this makes it so easy to sound more professional, to sound more academic, to make sure you're using the right terms and you're not just sort of like using high school level terminology to be like, oh yeah, it kind of splits and separates here. You can start to go in and talk about all of that for the propagation, separation. You can talk about stress concentration, fatigue and imperfections, all of that sort of stuff. Now you have the language at your fingertips to talk about anything academic that you want. Sometimes as you're writing your thesis and dissertation, there's just that one sort of like perfect reference that you need to find. And it's really hard to find it because it's just lost to the world. This is where I use things like Site Assistant or Syspace. So Site Assistant, if you go to site.ai, which is here and then you click up here into Assistant, you click there and then you get access to this AI research partner and you can ask a question. But go down here, go to settings first. So here you can actually sort of change how it responds. So I want to make sure that, let's have a look. Okay, I always want to use references. I want both huge structures response, yes. If I've got a certain year range for a paper, you know, if I want something more recent, I can put it in here. But I make sure that that is set appropriately for the sort of response I want. And if you're writing your PhD thesis or your dissertation for your master's, whatever it is, you have to make sure that you are getting appropriate responses that will match what you want to say and for a thesis, you want that to be as academic and referenced as possible. So I'll go in here and I'll ask questions. As I'm sort of, you know, typing up my thesis, I'll be like, oh, I need a little reference just to say this. Or I know that there was this paper that said this, I can go in and find it using an AI research partner where I can go and find those references. Another one I would use, and this is probably one I use more often is Syspace. And I'll go in and once again, I will ask a question here. If I've got a specific PDF, I can ask questions about that PDF. I'm going to extract data, I can paraphrase, I can do everything that I really want to do in Syspace for a thesis or dissertation, which is why it's my go-to. So as I'm writing my thesis, I'm sort of juggling those two things, creating really sort of rigorous academic language, but also I'm trying to find evidence at the same time to support what I'm saying. For example, with the delamination thing, I can go find examples about delamination in the literature, something that I wouldn't have necessarily done during my literature review. And it just sort of like works together. You're just sort of like writing, referencing, writing, referencing, reading, reading, reading, referencing, you know, you've got to read these references, by the way. The last way that's really valuable for enhancing your academic writing is by using AI proofreaders. There's two that I really like. The first one is Trinker. Trinker by Enargo here is a really great way to actually check your academic writing. I've tested it on a range of different papers that I've had in the past. This is what they look like. So once you get it sort of like checked by Trinker, you do get a tracked changes word document. And that is just like your supervisor, at least my supervisor used to give back to me. So it is a nice first step for checking all of your academic writing. I really like it. And then, you know, it's got little comments down the side here. It's got the track changes. That is exactly what I want when I am looking through that first draft or trying to make it better. You get up to 30,000 words in one go. One credit will use 5,000 words. So you do get quite a generous free limit with Trinker. But if you're checking your thesis or your dissertation, you need to make sure that you're checking it all in one go or you're sort of like putting it in in sections or putting it in in chapters. The last thing I really like is PaperPal. PaperPal, this is their edit PaperPal section. This is their web interface, but you can also install it on Word. Go check out my other video where I talk about using PaperPal in more detail. But the one thing I like about this is you can paste in sections and then you get all of these checks along the side here. So you can see that this one, you know, it doesn't like that and it's changing it to the green. And then it's got this one from these images. It is clear. Yes, okay. So by using these tools, you'll be making sure that your supervisor isn't distracted by those silly little mistakes. They're actually addressing the underlying science and research that you want to address. Those are the most important changes. I used to get backstabbed all the time being like full stop here. Make sure you do the thing there. The, the, the, the, the, the. And I was like, yes, I get it. I get it. I get how bad at putting full stops. But what do you think of the actual science in here? That was far more useful because that's the thing that actually gets you a PhD or gets you through your master's, not the position of certain full stops or, you know, commas or semi-colons, however you use them. If you like this video, go check out this one where I talk about AI enhanced academic writing where there's more tools to make sure that your academic writing is chef's kiss.