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foundations · Level 1

Use AI to study, research and write without losing your own thinking

Quiz yourself, check every claim and citation, write in your own voice, and stay inside your school, university or employer's rules.

By Mickarle Wagstaff-Irons - Micky Irons

  • Level 1Starting out
  • 110 min
  • 6 chapters
  • Free PDF, no account
Download free PDF (PDF, 1.7 MB)
The Aperturefoundations / 01

Start with the essentials

The short answer

Use AI to support your thinking, not replace it. Attempt the work first, then ask for quizzes, explanations and feedback. Check every fact and reference against the real source, because AI can produce fluent but false statements and invented citations. Follow your school, university or employer's rules, say how you used AI, and never paste other people's personal data or confidential work into a tool.

What you will learn

  • You will be able to explain, with evidence, why retrieval practice and spacing help learning, and what the evidence on AI does and does not show.
  • You will be able to turn your notes into practice questions and use an assistant to quiz, explain and check your understanding.
  • You will be able to check every claim and citation an AI gives you against the real source, and record the result.
  • You will be able to write your own draft first, use AI for feedback, and log what came from where.
  • You will be able to find the rules that apply to you, read what JCQ and the Department for Education say, and disclose AI use honestly.
  • You will be able to keep other people's personal data and confidential work out of AI tools, and write your own AI-use rules for a course or job.

Who it is for

Students, adult learners and working professionals who study, research or write and want AI to help without doing their thinking for them or getting them into trouble. It is written for UK readers, but its sources mainly cover England and it does not cover Scottish qualifications: rules differ by nation, exam board, school, university and employer. No coding is needed.

Before you start

  • Comfort with sending a chat assistant a prompt and following up, as taught in the Your first prompts workbook. A free chat assistant is useful for some steps, but every exercise can be done on paper.

Keep learning

The complete workbook

This workbook shows how to use an AI assistant to study, research and write without handing over your own thinking. You will use learning research to choose study workflows, learn a repeatable method to verify every claim and citation, and draft, get feedback and keep your own voice. You will also read what UK exam bodies and the government say about AI use, disclose your use honestly and keep other people's data out of AI tools.

  1. 01
    How you learn, and what that means for AI

    Before deciding how to use AI, look at what helps people learn. Then ask of every use: does this do the mental work for me, or make me do more of it?

    In the workbook · 1 exercise
  2. 02
    Study workflows: quiz, explain, check

    Four workflows keep you doing the thinking. Each has a prompt you can copy.

    In the workbook · 1 exercise
  3. 03
    Research with AI: fluent, but sometimes false

    An assistant can suggest search terms or explain a word. It is not a source: use it for leads, then find real sources yourself. Here is why, and a method to use every time.

    In the workbook · 1 exercise
  4. 04
    Writing: your draft first, then feedback

    Writing is where AI use is most tempting and most risky. One rule keeps the work yours: your first draft comes before the assistant.

    In the workbook · 1 exercise
  5. 05
    Integrity: rules, disclosure and detectors

    Whoever assesses you sets the rules, and the rules differ. Find them first, follow them, and be open about what you did.

    In the workbook · 1 exercise
  6. 06
    Privacy, confidentiality and your own rules

    A chat assistant runs on someone else's computers. What you type leaves your control, so decide in advance what never goes in.

    In the workbook · 1 exercise

Also inside: a 9-point checklist, a glossary of 12 terms and 10 questions and answers to test yourself. 6 hands-on exercises, each with a worked answer at the back where the workbook gives one.

Download all 6 chapters as PDF (PDF, 1.7 MB)

No login, no card, no account. Before the download we ask you to follow Mickai (two quick links). Free to download and use for personal learning, study groups and inside your own team. Please do not resell the workbooks or republish them as your own. Link people to trust-agent.ai instead.

Test yourself

Questions and answers

Is using AI to study cheating?

It depends on the rules and the use. Quizzing yourself on your own notes is a different matter from submitting text an assistant wrote as your own. For JCQ-regulated coursework, AI use must be acknowledged and you cannot earn marks for content the AI produced. Check your policy before you start.

How can I study with AI without it doing my thinking?

Attempt first, then ask. Have it quiz you, explain at different levels and probe your understanding, and check its answers against your notes. The evidence is mixed: one field experiment found unrestricted help harmed later exam scores, while a version built to give hints did not.

Why do AI tools invent references?

JCQ explains that chatbots produce replies that are statistically likely to fit a request, so they cannot be relied upon: they can sound convincing yet be wrong, and some produce fake references. A 2023 study found 55% and 18% of references fabricated in two versions. Tools change, so always check.

How do I check a citation properly?

Find the source yourself by its exact title. Match authors, year, journal and pages. Open it and find the passage that supports the claim. Give a verdict, rewrite the claim to match what the source says, and cite what you read, not the AI.

Can I ask the AI whether its own references are real?

No. Walters and Wilder note that earlier studies found assistants often answer wrongly when asked whether a citation is correct. Verify against a library search, a scholarly index or the publisher's page instead.

Do I have to say that I used AI?

Follow your policy. JCQ requires the tool's name and the date, a saved copy of your questions and its replies, and a brief explanation of how you used it. Universities and employers vary. If unsure, ask, and disclose.

Can AI detectors prove that I used AI?

Not on their own. Jisc says no tool can conclusively prove it and that they produce false positives. A 2023 test of 14 tools found none above 80% accuracy. JCQ says scores belong within a wider judgement. A score can still start a conversation.

What should I do if I am wrongly accused?

Stay honest and delete nothing. Ask in writing for the allegation, the evidence and the procedure. Gather dated drafts and notes, write your own account, get support from your students' union or an adviser, and use the appeal route within its deadline. Your written procedure governs; this is general guidance, not legal advice.

What can I safely paste into an AI tool?

Your own notes with nothing private in them, text you are allowed to use, or made-up examples. Keep out other people's personal data, confidential work and passwords, and anything that would be a problem if public. Use tools your institution or employer approves.

Does this workbook tell me which AI tool to use?

No. It does not rank or recommend tools. Use whichever your school, university or employer approves, read its privacy terms, and see The free AI toolkit workbook for how to compare tools and check their terms.

When you have finished

Get your certificate of completion

Type your name and download a certificate for this workbook as a PDF, ready to print or to add to LinkedIn. It is made on your own device, so your name is never sent to us. It is a self-declared certificate, not an accredited qualification.

Make my certificate

Learn the language

Key terms

Retrieval practice
Trying to recall something from memory before you check it, for example with a quiz or a blank-page summary. The 2013 review calls it practice testing.
Spaced practice
Spreading study over several sessions instead of one. Also called distributed practice.
Self-explanation
Explaining, in your own words, how or why something works while you study it.
Hallucination
When an AI presents something false or invented as though it were true, such as a reference to a work that does not exist. The Department for Education uses the word for nonsensical, inaccurate or false information presented as fact.
DOI
Digital object identifier: a permanent code for a published paper or book. Searching for it takes you to the official record.
JCQ
The Joint Council for Qualifications, the joint body of UK awarding organisations such as AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC. Its regulations cover their exams, coursework and non-exam assessments.

6 of the workbook's 12 terms. The complete glossary is in the workbook.

Follow the evidence

Sources and checks

Facts last checked: .

These workbooks use AI assistance. See how the workbooks are made.

  1. AI Use in Assessments: Your role in protecting the integrity of qualifications (revision two, 30 April 2025)Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ)
  2. AI and Assessments: a quick guide for students (effective from September 2026)Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ)
  3. Suspected Malpractice: Policies and Procedures (effective September 2026)Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ)
  4. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education (last updated 12 August 2025)Department for Education, GOV.UK
  5. Principles on the use of generative AI tools in education (3 July 2023; full text in the PDF linked from this page)Russell Group
  6. A Generative AI Primer (version 1.7, January 2026)Jisc National Centre for AI
  7. Good Practice Framework: Disciplinary procedures (October 2018)Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA)
  8. ChatGPT and large language models: what's the risk? (14 March 2023)National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)
  9. What is personal data?Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
  10. Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham, 2013)Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58 (abstract read via PubMed)
  11. Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis (Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted and Rohrer, 2006)Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380 (abstract read via PubMed)
  12. Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006)Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255 (author-hosted copy, Purdue University)
  13. Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics (Bastani and colleagues, 2025)Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122 (open-access copy, PubMed Central)
  14. AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting (Kestin and colleagues, 2025)Scientific Reports, 15, 17458 (Nature Portfolio)
  15. Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT (Walters and Wilder, 2023)Scientific Reports, 13, 14045 (Nature Portfolio)
  16. Testing of detection tools for AI-generated text (Weber-Wulff and colleagues, 2023)International Journal for Educational Integrity, 19, article 26 (Springer)
  17. GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers (Liang and colleagues, 2023)Patterns, 4(7), 100779 (Cell Press; open-access copy, PubMed Central)

Created by Mickarle Wagstaff-Irons - Micky Irons with the Mickai team. Published by Mickai LTD. Last updated 26 September 2026.

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