University of California San Francisco
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Three strategies to use ChatGPT effectively

ChatGPT can help you think, search, and write

ChatGPT Enterprise (ChatGPT) is UCSF’s private, secure generative AI platform. It is approved for use with UCSF internal, sensitive, and restricted P1-P4 data, including data protected by HIPAA and FERPA, when used in accordance with UCSF policies. It is provided in collaboration with OpenAI, but your chats and data will not be accessed or used by OpenAI or UCSF. For support, email [email protected] and see IT’s ChatGPT FAQs.

For security and privacy, ChatGPT chats self-delete after 90 days. Some features, including image generation, Deep Research, and Voice mode, have periodic usage limits. Like all generative AI tools, ChatGPT can be biased or convincingly inaccurate, so always verify outputs before using them.

ChatGPT can support your work in three complementary ways: thinking, searching, and writing:

1. Think

Use ChatGPT as a thought partner to brainstorm, organize, evaluate, and refine ideas.

Example: A faculty member designing an assessment can use ChatGPT to clarify learning objectives, identify the knowledge and skills learners should demonstrate, determine the appropriate level of cognitive complexity, anticipate common learner misconceptions, and develop an assessment strategy before drafting assessment questions. This helps faculty gather the information and examples needed to support question development.

2. Search

Use ChatGPT to find, synthesize, and explain information by asking follow-up questions, requesting summaries, and receiving tailored responses.

Example: Once an assessment strategy is defined, a faculty member can ask ChatGPT to identify examples of effective assessment questions, summarize current evidence and clinical guidelines, explain key concepts, and describe how similar topics are assessed in other educational settings. These insights can inform the development of assessment questions and supporting materials that align with learning objectives.

3. Write

Use ChatGPT to draft, revise, summarize, and edit text, or transform online or uploaded content into new materials.

Example: Using the assessment information gathered during the search process, a faculty member can ask ChatGPT to draft multiple-choice questions, short-answer questions, clinical vignettes, answer explanations, or scoring rubrics. ChatGPT can also generate plausible distractors and suggest revisions to improve clarity, difficulty, and alignment with learning objectives. The resulting assessment can then be reviewed, tested, and refined with ChatGPT to improve its clarity, accuracy, and educational quality.

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Last revised July 22, 2026