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Information Literacy: AI in Higher Education: AI Research Tools

Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and use information ethically

AI Tools

Introduction to Generative AI Tools for Faculty

Generative AI encompasses a wide range of tools and applications capable of producing text, images, video, music, speech, and even multimodal content that blends these formats. These tools offer new possibilities for content creation, idea exploration, and information synthesis—making them valuable assets in academic settings.

Faculty can leverage generative AI to:

  • Enhance instructional materials
  • Support student engagement
  • Streamline administrative tasks
  • Accelerate research workflows

The tools listed on this page represent a sample of what’s currently available. This is not an exhaustive list, and due to the rapid pace of AI development, some tools may become outdated or replaced by newer alternatives.

We will periodically update this resource to reflect emerging technologies and best practices. However, we encourage faculty to explore beyond this list and stay informed about the evolving AI landscape.

Tools for Research

AI Tools for Research (Faculty Guide)

Generative AI tools can support research by helping discover sources, summarize findings, and visualize scholarly connections. These tools are best used to supplement traditional literature review methods—not replace them.

 Recommended Tools

  • NotebookLM
    Upload documents and get AI-generated summaries, Q&A, and insights tailored to your sources.
  • Consensus
    Ask research questions and get distilled findings from academic papers. Limited scope compared to library databases.
  • Elicit
    Automates parts of the literature review process—finds papers, summarizes key points, and extracts data.
  • ResearchRabbit
    Citation-based tool that maps scholarly networks and helps discover related academic papers.
  • Connected Papers
    Visualizes relationships between papers. Great for exploring prior works, reviews, and recent developments.
  • Scite
    Provides Smart Citations showing whether a source supports or contradicts another. Funded by NSF and NIH.
  • Sum It Up
    Instantly summarizes articles, text, or URLs. Useful for quick content digestion.

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