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Posted Nov. 27, 2025

How AI is transforming postgraduate study habits

AI study habits

A postgraduate degree sets you up for quite an impressive career, regardless of the industry you select. However, it also means you have to fully embrace a life of learning and advanced certifications.

Many positions require continuous professional development. Fields like medicine, teaching, law, accounting, and more may require you to renew your license every few years. In contrast, other positions will have you invest in lateral specialisation to climb the career ladder. 

Life can be difficult when you’re trying to juggle study, career and a personal life, but things are different for today’s learners. The emergence of AI educational and study tools is having a significant and mostly positive impact on how we study. 

The benefits centre around efficiency, personalisation and skill acquisition, but there’s more to talk about on this subject. If you’re curious, grab a cup of tea and continue reading. 

Increased efficiency and research acceleration

Some of the best things AI tools do is help reduce the amount of time you will need to spend researching, reviewing, drafting and editing. They streamline the most time-consuming aspects of postgraduate work so that you can focus on more important things, like high-level analysis or mental health.

Literature review and synthesis tools

Tools like Elicit or Scite can rapidly summarise vast amounts of research literature, extract key findings and map out connections between papers. This replaces days of manual reading with minutes of targeted information retrieval.

But quality information doesn’t come just from research papers. You may also have to watch hours of video footage and extract key data. Luckily, you can use tools like Knowt's AI video summarizer with this task. In less than a minute, you’ll get the summary, flash cards and even quizzes that test your knowledge.

Drafting and editing

How many hours did you lose staring at a white piece of electronic paper on your screen? Writer’s block is a real thing, but now there are generative AI tools to break through the blockage. 

AI won’t write the paper in your place (it won’t write it well, anyway), but it can provide an initial outline and ideas to get you started. It’s also great at refining thesis statements and polishing academic language. This frees your brain from the shackles of perfect writing, allowing ideas bubbling under the surface to materialise on your page. 

Tools like Paperpal or Writefull focus on academic tone, advanced grammar and style, which is especially helpful for non-native English speakers.

Extra tip: Generative AI is great at getting you unstuck from a lot of places. For instance, if you’re looking for the best degree to change your career, a talk with ChatGPT or Gemini can be quite insightful.

Data organisation

Disorganised research notes and confusing data points are not good friends with efficiency and speed. Yet, it happens even to the most order-oriented of us. AI can assist with organising and classifying research notes, transcripts or data points, converting unstructured information into searchable, structured formats.

Shift in learning and cognitive focus

In the same way that the internet changed the way we treat information (we no longer memorise it, but learn how to find it), AI has changed what students spend their mental energy on. The focus has shifted from learning how to retrieve information to prompt engineering. This is the skill of formulating precise queries to get high-quality, relevant results – this makes the ability to ask the right question almost as important as knowing the right answer.

The emphasis has shifted from rote memorisation or simple information gathering to verifying, critiquing and synthesising the AI's output. Postgraduates must now develop strong skills in critical thinking, fact checking and identifying AI biases or hallucinations.

New challenges for academic integrity and skill erosion

Academic misconduct is not new, but the accessibility of generative AI has led to a sharp increase in cases. Many students have submitted AI-generated text as their own work without proper citation or acknowledgement.

Besides the ethical issues raised by such behaviour, students are hindering their own progress when they overuse AI tools and platforms. Reliance on AI for tasks such as summarising complex texts or performing basic statistical calculations can undermine the development of fundamental critical thinking, analytical and writing skills essential for a postgraduate degree.

To make assessments AI-resistant, lecturers have moved away from traditional essays towards oral defences, in-class exams, group projects and assignments that require the application of complex, recent or context-specific knowledge that AI cannot easily generate.

Enhanced multilingual and global collaboration

Due to AI translation and transcription tools, it’s now easier than ever to access and understand research papers, course materials and industry reports published in other languages. This is crucial in disciplines like international business, law or political science, where global sources are necessary.

For postgraduates whose first language is not English, AI writing tools can ensure that the academic tone, formality and structure meet the high standards of journal submission or professional reports.

Plus, tools like TalkPal or LanguaTalk can help you communicate with a postgraduate colleague who doesn’t speak your language without much difficulty. 

The development of ethical AI literacy

Whether you like it or not, AI is now part of the academic world. The technology is great for streamlining learning, reducing the time spent on research and discovering interesting papers or ideas. This forces students everywhere to develop new habits and skills. For instance, students are adopting habits of self-regulation and documentation, learning to cite AI properly (when permitted) and to transparently state where AI was used (eg ‘AI was used to summarise the literature review’). This develops responsible habits essential for future roles in data science, technology policy or any field dealing with AI implementation.

For a more in-depth approach and if you want to solidify your professional chances in the future, consider an Artificial Intelligence Masters degree. This would provide the technical foundation and, critically, the ethical framework required to lead innovation and adapt to the rapid technological advancements transforming every industry.

In summary

Overall, the use of AI across every aspect of learning is teaching students and regular users to methodically scrutinise the origins of every piece of information before accepting it as fact. Success now depends less on tedious manual work and more on ethical judgment, intellectual collaboration (with the AI) and advanced critical thinking.

Are you considering postgraduate study? Use our course search to find your perfect postgrad program.

Erika RykunAuthor’s bio: Erika Rykun is a book nerd and editor at Booklyst. 

When she’s not busy reading books, she writes about them.

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