AI Research Assistant

Search Battle Face Off: Library Catalog, AI Add-on, and Generative AI

This document contains suggested classroom activities to introduce your students to OneSearch AI Research Assistant, an AI add-on to OneSearch (FSU’s Library Catalog). First, collectively examine the library guide for OneSearch AI Research Assistant. This will involve concentrating on its step-by-step instructions, as well as its advantages and disadvantages. Alternatively, a brief demonstration of the tools could precede the classroom activities.


Note: FSU ID login is required to use OneSearch AI Research Assistant.

Same Question, Different Answers in Traditional Library Catalog and the AI Add-on to Library Catalog: (30 minutes)
 

Objective: Get students to practice using the OneSearch (the traditional library catalog), and OneSearch AI Research Assistant (AI add-on to OneSearch) and become familiar with how each works. This will also demonstrate to students that inputting the same search terms into OneSearch AI Research Assistant may yield different results over time.
 

1. Put your students in pairs or groups of three and have them all navigate to the library website and open the library catalog (OneSearch).
2. Direct groups to develop a research question related to their coursework or interests. Have all students in each group input the keywords from their research question into OneSearch's traditional search and review the top 5 items from the search results. 
3. Next, have students open OneSearch AI Research Assistant in a new tab. Each student should input their full research question (not keywords but in natural language) into the chat interface. Give them time to review the generated summaries and source suggestions.
4. Ask students to compare their results with their groups and discuss the following questions about their Research Assistant results. 
   1. Even though you used the same research question, how did your OneSearch AI Research Assistant's results compare within your group? What might explain these differences, and how does this compare to the consistency you saw with traditional keyword searching?
   2. Compare the types of sources and information you discovered through each method. Did OneSearch AI Research Assistant surface relevant materials that your original keyword search missed? Conversely, did your traditional search reveal anything important that the OneSearch AI Research Assistant overlooked?
5. Have students click on “View more results from your library search” from the OneSearch AI Research Assistant page. This will bring them to the search page generated from their results. Direct students to look at the search bar on this page. Discuss with the group:
   1. What search terms did the OneSearch AI Research Assistant create for you?
   2. When you viewed the underlying search strings that OneSearch AI Research Assistant generated, how did they compare to your original keywords and the search string? What did AI change?
6. Finally, tell students to compare their original library search results to the search terms that the OneSearch AI Research Assistant generated. Discuss the following questions in their groups. Stress that there is no one right answer, and this is based on personal preference and relevance judgment.
   1. Which search has more helpful results: the original library search result or the results generated by OneSearch AI Research Assistant?
   2. In the future, would you rather use the library search by itself or use the  OneSearch AI Research Assistant? Why?

Research Remix Challenge with the AI Add-on to Library Catalog: Broad, Specific, and Keywords  (15-20 minutes)
 

Objective: Students will explore how the OneSearch AI Research Assistant responds to various query types, enabling them to tailor their input for improved results and build confidence in using the tool independently.
 

1. Ask students to come up with a research topic that they are genuinely curious about. This could be something they want to research for a current or future assignment, or something they are personally interested in. 
2. Next, have students come up with at least three different ways of phrasing their query. For example:
   1. A broad question: “How does social media affect communication?”
   2. A specific angle: “Impact of TikTok on political messaging among Gen Z”
   3. A keyword-only search: “TikTok political communication Gen Z”
3. Once they have their research queries, students should input each one into the OneSearch AI Research Assistant and review the summary and sources it provides. 
4. Have students reflect on the following questions:
   1. How did the results change with each variation?
   2. Which phrasing gave the most useful results?
   3. What did they learn about how the AI interprets queries?
5. Have students reflect on some of the following questions. This could happen through class discussion, a short writing assignment, or sharing in small groups:
   1. How did your results shift as you moved from a broad research question to a more specific angle, and then to keyword-only searching? Which version of your query brought you closest to the kind of sources you were actually hoping to find and why do you think that was?
   2. How did the types of sources change depending on how you phrased your query? Did some versions surface more books, articles, or reports or bring up materials from different time periods? How might that influence the way you approach searching in the future?
   3. Based on what you tried today, what’s your strategy for using the  OneSearch AI Research Assistant going forward? When might it make sense to start broad, and when would you go in with something more specific? Could combining different query styles help you build a more complete search?
   4. If you were teaching someone else how to use this tool, what would be your top two pieces of advice for phrasing prompts effectively, based on what you learned today?

Generative AI vs. AI Add-on to Library Catalog: A Research Competition (15-20 minutes)
 

Objective: This activity is designed to help students distinguish between general-purpose generative AI tools and the library’s OneSearch AI Research Assistant, which is also powered by generative AI but tailored for academic discovery. By the end of the session, students should be able to evaluate which tools are most appropriate for locating scholarly content.

1. Put students in groups of four or five and instruct them to come up with a research question. 
2. Have the students put their research question into a generative AI application (ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, etc.) and give them a few minutes to look over the results generated by their query. Encourage them to take note of the types of sources, the tone of the response, and whether citations are included or verifiable.
3. Direct students to put the same research question into OneSearch AI Research Assistant and give them a few minutes to review their results. 
4. Have the students compare the contents from each. Discuss the following questions in their group:
   1. How did the results from OneSearch AI Research Assistant compare to those from general AI tools in terms of credibility, peer review, and relevance to academic research? Were the sources from OneSearch more scholarly or specific?
   2. How did the breadth and depth of content differ between the two approaches? What unique materials did OneSearch AI Research Assistant surface that the general AI tools missed or couldn't access?
   3. Which format was more useful for academic research purposes - the conversational responses from general AI or the structured catalog results from OneSearch AI Research Assistant? 
   4. Based on your experience with both tools, when would you choose to start with a general AI tool versus going directly to OneSearch AI Research Assistant? 

After each activity, please encourage students to click the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon on OneSearch AI Research Assistant and leave their feedback on the tool.


Document created Sept. 19, 2025