We all know how long and boring reading articles can be. We all also know that there is lots to read when you study at university. There is lecture preparation, there are articles that you need to read to understand the context more in-depth and many more. Furthermore, required reading material is usually part of the exam content and therefore it cannot be omitted if one hopes to receive a high grade.
For me, reading articles is hard – I get distracted very easily, academic language can be hard to understand and they are sometimes VERY long which, let’s not hide it, is not too inviting. On top of that, in most cases, not the entirety of a 30 page article is important and filtering through so much information can take some time. That is why, since I can remember I was dreading and procrastinating reading articles.
One day, someone told me about ChatPDF. That’s when everything changed! ChatPDF combines advanced natural language processing and machine learning to help users understand PDF documents better (How Does ChatPDF Work? A Comprehensive Guide on Using ChatPDF — Otio Blog, n.d.). By extension, it can help with summarizing and understanding academic articles. By uploading the reading material as a PDF, ChatPDF can answer questions about the text, provide you with the most important insights drawn directly from it and prepare notes really quickly.
ChatPDF has helped me to prepare for lectures, workshops and seminars. In a way, this tool really made my life easier and most importantly saved me a lot of time. However, as with every AI tool, there are some risks and disadvantages. Since I do not read the article fully by myself, I can only hope that ChatPDF will provide me with all the important information and not ignore some parts for unknown reasons. Lastly, it is quite costly and therefore the question arises: is it really worth it? It is for me, but what do you think?
How does ChatPDF work? A comprehensive guide on using ChatPDF — Otio blog. (n.d.). https://otio.ai/blog/how-does-chatpdf-work
Interesting article to read and the topic is highly relevant to students like us! I completely understand the struggles with reading class materials and we typically spend a significant portion of time summarizing key takeaways, there is no doubt that this is a time-consuming process. I have used ChatPDF or Zotero for summarizing/translating class materials; it certainly saves me a lot of time! So, I am willing to pay for these tools to study. However, if the price is too high, I will hesitate and try to seek something free. I do believe if students aiming for a decent grade in studying, reading materials/lecture slides, try best to understand the definition, and memorizing definitions by closely linking to rea-life examples is a must. Therefore, I will personally still try to read the materials as much as I can and try not completely depending on these GenAI tools. As those minor definitions/terms often mentioned in exams and AI tools mostly summarize the most important definitions.