EG10117, or Engineering Design, is a class that is required of all first-year engineering students. Its purpose is to teach engineering students how to use specific design tools, provide students with the opportunity to discern which engineering discipline they wish to pursue and teach students to communicate technically. One of the learning objectives of the course is for students to be able to interpret and consider ethics and virtues in the context of engineering. To aid in this goal, the EG10117 teaching team provides students with one “AI Tip of the Day” at the end of each class. The following are a sample of these tips to help you responsibly maximize AI’s capabilities:

1. Use Gemini

Notre Dame has an agreement with Gemini and Gemini Notebook to protect the data of students and faculty. Google will not use any data entered into Gemini to train its AI model and it will not share our data globally. Therefore, students are encouraged to only use Gemini instead of other AI tools.

2. Self-quizzing

You can upload lecture slides (with the permission of the professor) or your own class notes into Gemini and have Gemini generate multiple-choice questions, practice tests or flashcards. Gemini has a “Guided Learning” option as well, which allows you to study uploaded materials or learn directly from Gemini.

3. Gemini Notebook

This feature is not as widely known but can be extremely useful: Course instructors can create Gemini Notebooks that include course material such as the syllabus, project documents, lectures and assignments. Instead of searching Canvas pages to find the information you are looking for, all you have to do is type your prompt into the chat box. Gemini will always cite the file(s) where it found information in its response.