AI Literacy with Ohio University Libraries

Welcome to our module on AI literacy. Today, we're going to explore how to use AI tools responsibly as part of your academic research at Ohio University. We'll cover things like searching and research strategies, various AI tools, and of course, ethical use of AI tools. Before we can use AI tools, including the tools built into the library's website, we need to talk about academic integrity. At Ohio University, expectations around AI use can vary depending on your course that you're enrolled in. Some instructors may not allow AI use, while others may allow it with proper citation or documentation. Be sure to check out the AI use category on your syllabus or reach out to your instructor. AI tools raise important privacy and data security considerations. Ohio University recommends using Microsoft Copilot through your Office 365 apps because it provides commercial data protection. That means anything you type into Copilot isn't saved or used outside of the university. No matter what tool you're using, you should avoid entering personal or sensitive information and be cautious about sharing research data. For today's tutorial, we'll be using the AI-powered search built into the library's website to show some helpful searching tips when working with AI. Tools like this are embedded directly into the library platform, so they're designed to work with the resources you already have access to as an OU student. It's also helpful to know that there are other types of AI tools out there that aren't built into the library system. For example, the library provides access to Consensus, which focuses on searching peer-reviewed research. You may already be familiar with other tools such as ChatGPT or Claude. The search strategies we'll cover today can be applied across all of them. Learning these techniques will help you get better results, no matter which AI tool you're using. When using AI tools, it's important to carefully evaluate what they produce and what the intention or objective of the tool is. AI ecosystems can introduce bias, generate incorrect or fabricated information, sometimes called hallucinations, and even give different answers to the same question at different times. Because of this, you should never assume an AI response is accurate without checking it. One helpful way to evaluate AI output is by using the ROBOT test. This is to help you think critically about AI-generated information. ROBOT stands for reliability, objectives, bias, ownership, and type. Let's walk through how you can apply this test to an AI response. Reliability. Ask yourself, how trustworthy is this information? Does the AI provide sources and are they real, current, or even scholarly? If citations are included, click on them and verify that they actually exist and support the claim. Remember, AI can generate citations that look convincing, but may be inaccurate or completely made up. Objective. So, what is the purpose of this response? Is the AI trying to inform, summarize, persuade, or simplify? Understanding the goal helps you decide how much you can rely on the answer and whether you need more in-depth or scholarly sources. Bias. Consider what biases might be present. AI systems are trained on large data sets, which can include incomplete or biased information. Ask, does this response represent multiple perspectives? Are any viewpoints missing? Are ethical concerns or limitations acknowledged? Next is ownership. Who created or owns the AI tool you're using? Is it a university-supported tool like Copilot? Or is it a public tool trained on unknown data? Ownership matters because it affects transparency, privacy, and also how the system was trained. Also, consider who has access to this tool and how might that shape its response. And finally, type. What kind of AI tool is this and what was it designed to do? Is it generating summaries, predicting text, or is it retrieving research? Tools like library databases and systems like Consensus focus on scholarly materials. While general chatbots pull from broader, less controlled data, understanding the type of AI helps you recognize its strengths and its limitations. Using the ROBOT checklist helps you move from simply accepting AI output to evaluating it critically. Finally, always verify AI-generated information with reliable sources. This is where the library becomes essential. Library resources and databases provide peer-reviewed, scholarly materials that have already been evaluated for quality and credibility, making them a strong foundation for your research. Remember, AI can be a great starting point, but it should never be used as a definitive source of information. Let's go ahead and get into strategies for searching and researching with AI tools. For example, let's say we're doing research on climate change. Our research question may look something like this. What are the connections between climate change and public health? To start, I'll go to the library's main website, ohio.edu/library. There, you'll see a search box in the middle of the page. Click the magnifying glass to get to the expanded search. Once we click on that, a subpage will appear from the right, where you can type out your question. You can choose which kind of resources and from where the AI tool will draw its answers from. Articles and more will search for scholarly information like peer-reviewed articles, books, films, book reviews, blog posts, and much more. Ohio library catalog will search for books or ebooks that are located at an Ohio campus, such as Athens, Zanesville, Chillicothe, Eastern, Lancaster, or Southern. Ohio LINK will search for books and ebooks that are outside of our Ohio campus within the state. Ohio LINK is basically an agreement that we have with other universities and schools in the state of Ohio. So, if the book you're looking for isn't at an Ohio campus, it may be at a different institution in the state of Ohio. This service is completely free to Ohio University students. Course Reserves is a collection of materials that your instructor has placed on hold for your class. Sometimes instructors provide their own copy of a book and make it available at the library for a short-term checkout. You should only search this section if your instructor has told you that there is a book on course reserve. WorldCat is a tool that lets you search for books and materials from libraries all over the world. If something isn't available at Ohio University or OhioLINK, you can use WorldCat to find it in another library and request it through interlibrary loan. For now, we're going to search using the AI tool Ask Anything in Articles and More. Then, we're going to type our research question into the box right under the drop-down menu. Then, we'll click on the green search button on the bottom right corner. After we click on search, we'll see a list of our results. Let's go ahead and filter out what we have so far. First, click on all filters at the top left corner above the results. Your filter options should open on the left-hand side of the webpage. From here, I'm going to select peer-reviewed journals and available online. Then, I'm going to scroll down where it says creation date and limit my results to the past 5 years, 2021 to 2026. Then, I'll click on the green button that says apply filters at the bottom. Now, we have a robust search result for our topic. Like we said before, AI cannot be your only search strategy for research, especially if you're new to research. Let's say we have this research question. How does social media affect people? Let's type this research question into the Ask Anything search box, then click on the green search button at the bottom right corner. Here is roughly what our search results look like. Most of these items are about social networking and it's not the results we're looking for. That's because our research question is too vague. We need to discover new keyword searches, which we call Boolean searching. Boolean searching is just telling the computer what to include, what to add, and what to leave out. So, let's take our research question to Copilot and see what we can generate. Go ahead and type this into Copilot. Please turn this research question into a list of keywords for a Boolean search string I can use in the library database. How does social media affect people? Make sure the Boolean search uses and and or. Copilot should generate a list of keywords for your search topic and will even create a Boolean search string for you to copy and paste right into the search engine. I'm going to copy and paste this Boolean string into a search engine. Let's go ahead and start back at the library homepage. This time, we want to click on the advanced search link next to the ask anything link. Once we click on advanced search, we'll see a search box appear from the right. We can open and paste our entire search string into the first search box, then click on the green search button at the bottom corner. So, let's use the filtering options to limit our results. I'll select peer-reviewed journals, available online, and then set the creation date to the past 5 years. This will give us more results in our search. And that's all for our tutorial today. Remember that AI is a valuable tool when used responsibly. At Ohio University, make sure to follow your course policies, protect your data, and use AI to support, not replace, your research. Thanks for watching.