Paper Topic Ideas

Using AI as a Partner in Brainstorming Topic Ideas

It's hard to think of a topic that's been in the news more in the past few years than artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI (genAI) is likely to change the way we interact with information and ideas. You may have heard of or used genAI tools such as ChatGPT,  Perplexity, or Gemini. While there are many, many reasons to be cautious and critical about using genAI (plagiarism and cheating, copyright issues, biased information or misinformation, environmental impacts of server farms, just to name a few), there may also be ways genAI could be integrated into parts of the research process to support thinking and learning. For example, the purpose of this research guide, and this blog, is to help illuminate the often murky task of brainstorming, choosing, and developing a topic for a research paper. Could generative AI be a useful tool in helping you think through paper topic ideas?

*Important note: Instructors may have specific policies around if and how genAI can be used in your class. Please adhere to any guidelines or restrictions from your instructor about the use of genAI*

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Let's assume that I'm writing a research paper, and the instructor has given the class very general guidelines for choosing a topic -- students are asked to research and write about a topic that interests them. The paper is 4-5 pages long, so the instructor has also suggested that the topic needs to be specific enough to be able to cover in that length -- in other words, large issues or topics will need to be broken down into smaller subtopics.
 

That is where things can get tricky. How do we brainstorm sub-topics or research-sized pieces of a topic? How do we turn a broad topic idea into a researchable question? One common way to do this is through "pre-searching" -- finding overview or background articles on a broader topic, from news sources or Wikipedia, for example, and skimming those articles to get ideas of the many sub-topics that are a part of that issue. Reading about a larger topic might also generate questions and curiosities about the topic that can lead to a narrower research topic. And -- this might be a time where genAI could be used as a "think partner" in brainstorming research questions and topics. Let's try that out.
 

Using ChatGPT to Brainstorm Topic Ideas
 

For this post, I'm going to try using ChatGPT, since it's the genAI with the most name recognition. You could also open ChatGPT and play around with these same search prompts -- you will likely get different answers from mine. 

Trying to think of a topic that interests me, I came up with video games. Video games is a good example of a broad topic -- what about video games do I want to research and write about? I was intentionally vague with my first search prompt in ChatGPT: video game topics. I want to see what ChatGPT will come up with when I don't give it much guidance. I was pleasantly surprised that it did return some more narrowed-down researchable topic ideas:

 
 This image of ChatGPT's response to the prompt "video game topics" is available as a screen-readable transcript

Getting More Specific
 

So far, I think ideas #2 (gaming culture) and #10 (ethical and social issues in gaming) hold a lot of possibility. I'm going to keep the conversation going with ChatGPT to see if I can dive deeper into those broader subtopics. I'm going to let it know who I am and what I'm working on. My next prompt is: I'm a college student who is going to write a research paper. Help me brainstorm some of the potential impacts of video games on society. Here are the results:
 

This image of ChatGPT's response about the positive impacts of video games on society is available as a screen-readable transcript
 

 This image of ChatGPT's response about the negtive and neutral impacts of video games on society is available as a screen-readable transcript

Digging Deeper 

I like that now I have positive, negative, and neutral impact ideas for gaming on society. I could choose one of these impacts to focus my research paper around. I'm curious about the ethical issue of representation in gaming. I'm going to ask ChatGPT to help me think through one more question: Give me more details on representation in gaming -- what do you mean by gender and race?
 

This image of ChatGPT's response about representation in gaming is available as a screen-readable transcript

So, How Did it Go?

By now I feel that I've gotten several useable ideas for research topics related to video games that are interesting and specific enough for me to focus my research and writing on. I'm going to write about gender representation in video game characters. Once I begin my research and start reading articles and other sources that talk about this topic, I can decide if there's a particular stance I'm going to take, or a particular question I want to answer. 

In this example, I used genAI as a tool to help me with one step in the research process: brainstorming and narrowing a research topic idea. Some of the ideas generated by ChatGPT helped me to think through different angles on this topic, and to see it through various lenses, much in the same way that a background article on video games might. What do you think about using genAI in this way?