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Copilot

Copilot is an AI-powered assistant, which you can access with your Microsoft Office 365 account.  You can use it through the website, or you can open it within Microsoft Edge, by pressing on the Copilot icon image of the Copilot icon found in the top right corner.  Copilot can also be found in other Microsoft Office applications.

You can use Copilot to support your study, with tasks such as:

SHU has some guidance available on the use of AI in your studies, found here

The Copilot panel

While in the Copilot window, you can resize the panel by long-pressing the left mouse button and dragging from the left-hand edge of the window.

You can also start a new chat by pressing on the image of the Start New Chat button icon.

You can view previous chats by pressing on the image of the Copilot menu icon icon and selecting Conversations.

Summarising articles

When working within MS Edge, you can use Copilot to summarise a webpage.  While on the webpage you want to work with, press on the Copilot icon to open the Copilot panel.

From here we can start a new chat by typing your query in the Message Copilot box.

In the Message Copilot box, we will put a query.  For this example, we are working from this webpage.

To get a summary of the open webpage or article, we can type ‘summarise the open article’ and then press the enter key.

image showing the Copilot panel in Microsoft Edge

 Copilot will now produce a summary of the article, as shown in the image to the right.  Copilot will break the summary down into sections and provide details as to what is covered in the article.

At the bottom of the Copilot panel, you will see some possible options for how you can continue to explore your query, as below -

image showing Copilot follow up options to a completed prompt

You can select any of the suggestions provided, or type your own follow up query into the chat box.

If you want to delve deeper into any of the points mentioned in the summary, we can ask Copilot to reproduce the text.  Using our webpage as an example, if you were struggling to find a particular point that was mentioned in the summary, we can ask Copilot to ‘reproduce the exact excerpt from the article where it mentions gamification’

That part of the article will be produced in Copilot, as shown below, and you can copy and paste this text into another application.

image showing a reproduction of the article excerpt in Copilot

You can also use Copilot to search for further research around a topic.  Again, using this example webpage and summary, we can ask Copilot ‘what additional research is there that supports the arguments for gamification. Provide links to each paper’

Copilot will produce a list of likely articles relevant to the query.  As the query requested links to each paper, Copilot will present links to the full article for each finding, alongside a summary to help you decide if it will be relevant.

image showing a result of the Copilot prompt search along with a link to the article

Revision materials

Using Copilot, we can create revision materials such as flash cards or quizzes.  In this example we will use the same webpage, however we will create a new chat by pressing on the start new chat icon image of the Start New Chat button.  This can help with separating your chats, making previous queries easier to find.

With the webpage open, in Copilot we can type a prompt such as ‘from this article, test me on my knowledge. Produce a minimum of 5 questions’

image showing the generated quiz in Copilot

You may end up with a random assortment of question styles, as in this case. If you wanted purely multiple choice, you can be more specific in your chat query, for example, ‘from this article, test me on my knowledge. Produce a minimum of 5 questions in multiple choice question format’.

You can also use Copilot to create a series of flashcards.  As a prompt, you can use ‘create flashcards in a PDF format so that I can test myself. 10 questions’.  Copilot will create a PDF document containing the flashcard questions and answers.

You will see a link to open the PDF.  Depending on your query, you can also choose to create the flashcards in a PowerPoint format. Copilot will usually then provide follow up options, where you can change the layout or format of the questions.

image showing the link to the Copilot generated PDF flashcards

Creating a PowerPoint slideshow

With Copilot, you can use it to create a PowerPoint slideshow based upon the information found on a webpage.  For example, from the summary of an article, we can then use a prompt like ‘From the summary of this article, create a PowerPoint slideshow. Include images where possible’

You will get a link to the PowerPoint file.  The images it chooses may not always be completely relevant to the slide content, so you may need to change or remove these.  Often, it will also add in some speaker notes, however if it doesn't, you could specify this in the chat prompt.

image showing a link to the Copilot generated slideshow and a breakdown of the content

Uploading files to Copilot

As well as asking Copilot to work with an open webpage, you can also upload files for it to work with.

In the Copilot message box, press on the + symbol.  From the menu that appears, select Upload images and files.

You can now browse to the document you want to upload into Copliot.

image showing the buttons to click to upload content into Copilot

Once the file is uploaded, you can put in a prompt for Copilot to perform an action on the file.  This could be the same kinds of prompts that have been covered in this guide.  If you upload a Word document, you can also ask Copilot to check for spelling and grammar mistakes.