A Step-by-Step guide to Literature Searching with GenAI

This literature search handout was used to teach a third year Biology course with the assistance of a Generative AI tool (Copilot). It provides students with a roadmap for the literature search process and demonstrates how they can incorporate Copilot to support their research. 

The TIC (Task, Instructions, and Context) Framework and Chain of Thought prompting was used to teach students prompt engineering (slides to explain these are also provided).

Note: In this handout, Copilot is used for brainstorming ideas but not for finding peer-reviewed journal articles. 

The handout covers the following steps:

Step 1: Pick a research topic and create a research question with Copilot

Step 2: Identify main keywords from research question using Copilot

Step 3: Use Copilot to brainstorm for synonyms

Step 4: Create a search strategy

Step 5: Select a database

Step 6: Conduct your search and examine your results

Step 7: Identify peer-reviewed articles

Step 8: Cite relevant articles