PhD Candidates Only | NEW - AI for doctoral studies – supporting academic work and writing

CONTENT
The workshop is aimed at doctoral students at universities of applied sciences who want to use generative AI specifically to support their doctoral project – from focusing on a topic and reviewing the literature to writing articles, exposés and dissertation chapters.

To begin with, the relevance of generative AI for research and academic writing will be outlined on the basis of selected studies (productivity, quality, typical application scenarios, limitations). This will be followed by an introduction to basic and some advanced prompting techniques geared towards typical tasks in the doctoral process.

The rest of the course follows the research and writing process: brainstorming and narrowing down the topic, literature research and evaluation, theoretical framework and methodology, structuring and formulating central parts of the dissertation. One focus is on NotebookLM for working with your own text and literature collections, supplemented by selected functions of Elicit for literature-based research. In practical phases, participants work with their own materials or sample data and exchange experiences on the benefits and limitations of AI in everyday doctoral work. Questions of good scientific practice (transparency, documentation of AI use, data protection) are also considered.

YOU AS PARTICIPANTS

• explain the significance of generative AI for doctoral projects and classify key empirical findings.
• apply phases of the research and writing process to your own doctoral project and identify useful AI application scenarios.
• apply selected prompting techniques to typical doctoral tasks (e.g. refining research questions, structuring literature, obtaining feedback on draft texts).
• use NotebookLM and, in addition, Elicit as examples for working with your own sources and reflect on opportunities and limitations in the light of good scientific practice.

PLEASE NOTE
For active participation, it is recommended that you have access to at least one current AI system (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) and a Google account to use NotebookLM. Ideally, you should have your own materials from your doctoral project (exposé, chapter drafts, abstracts, key articles) available for the exercises.

You will receive necessary login details (Zoom) in sufficient time before the workshop.