AI @ MU: Resources, Training, and More
This guide was created in early 2023, at the custom request of specific MU faculty asking for guidance on ChatGPT for student use. At that time, ChatGPT was the most popular (and virtually only) generative AI platform well-known to the general public. Since then, many companies have created generative AI products.
Due to the ever-changing landscape of AI, the creators of this library guide have chosen to keep Open AI's free version of ChatGPT as the basis for all screenshots and examples, in order to teach the research-related concepts that are important for college students to understand, specifically:
That said, all viewers of this guide should use whichever generative AI platform they prefer, understanding that subtle differences in the training of the LLM's* and major differences in the purpose of some LLM's will produce varied results. Users should also familiarize themselves with Data Security and Confidentiality issues pertaining to using generative AI, both of which are covered in the below resources.
Without further delay, please explore the following guidance from Marshall University's Academic Affairs, Presidential Taskforce on AI, The Office of Information Technology, and the Design Center. These resources will take you beyond the realm of library and research, and are a great starting point for anyone seeking to learn more about AI such as trainings, guidelines, and platforms.
*"LLM stands for large language model, and is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) program that can recognize and generate text, among other tasks. LLMs are trained on huge sets of data — hence the name 'large.'" Source: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ai/what-is-large-language-model/, "What is a large language model (LLM)?", CloudFlare. Accessed Aug. 2025.