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Get Started with ChatGPT Edu

ChatGPT Edu is a version of ChatGPT designed specifically for higher educational institutions—like universities and colleges. At UC Davis, subscriptions are only available to campus faculty and staff in the spring of 2025. UC Davis Health employees may contact their local IT unit for information. Subscription information is included at the bottom of this page. Before you start using ChatGPT Edu, there are several things you need to know and remember: 

1.  Follow the UC Davis AI Guidance (and check back for updates)

ChatGPT, like other generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models, is constantly evolving. We encourage Aggies to explore these tools responsibly and ethically, following the UC Davis AI Guidance.

2.  Learn how to use AI tools

UC Davis IET put together a list of resources to help you learn about how AI works and how to use it. Here are a few highlights:

  • UC AI Primer: Core Concepts and Fundamentals: The University of California offers a free course designed to provide you with the core concepts and fundamentals of using AI. It includes foundational AI terms and concepts, history, UC AI principles, and more.
  • ChatGPT/AI Resources for Educators: Dr. Margaret Merrill, Senior Instructional Design Consultant at UCD curated and maintains a list of helpful resources, articles, and events related to AI.
  • AI & Student Writing: Helpful guidance and strategies for helping students cultivate AI literacy and training them to use AI tools strategically and responsibly.

3.  Use UC Davis ChatGPT Edu for university business only

Much like your university email account, we do not recommend using ChatGPT Edu for personal use. ChatGPT Edu offers enhanced privacy and does not use your data to train other AI models, but it’s still best to treat it like a public platform. 

Do not enter information above a P2 protection level, or sensitive information, such as:

  • Personal identifiers (your full name, SSN, and address)
  • Confidential student or medical records
  • Proprietary research data or exam submissions

4.  Find use cases for teaching, learning, research or work or generate your own

Here are some examples to get you started:

  • Faculty support: Generate ideas for in-class activities and assignments, summarize text, create study guides and quizzes, and answer common student queries about coursework.
  • Researcher support: Summarize academic papers and abstracts, generate keyword suggestions for better database queries, improve the clarity and flow of complex writing, simulate a peer review, and interpret data more quickly.
  • Staff support: Refine emails for clarity and tone, troubleshoot coding issues, generate support documentation such as FAQs or guides, summarize reports or policies, and translate documents.

Find more use cases at: https://www.educause.edu/content/2025/2025-educause-ai-landscape-study/use-cases (login required with your UC Davis email).

Remember: Use AI as a tool, not a crutch

  • Double check prompt responses. ChatGPT can make mistakes or “hallucinate.”
  • Think of the tool like an assistant that can help you generate ideas and drafts, not the final product.
  • Ask ChatGPT to help you learn, not just give answers. You can ask it to summarize, clarify ideas, and receive feedback on content you’ve created. 

5.  Customize your experience

Learn more about memory, custom instructions, and prompts to make ChatGPT work for you.

  • Turn memory on or off (Settings > Personalization > Memory). If enabled, ChatGPT Edu will remember your preferences, improving responses over time.
  • Create custom instructions. Tell ChatGPT Edu what you’d like it to know about you (such as your subject area, role, teaching style, etc.) and specify how you would like it to respond (formal tone, concise summaries, etc.) to help tailor its responses to best fit your needs.
  • Provide more context in your prompt. ChatGPT Edu an expanded context window, allowing Aggies to provide more detailed information in their prompts. Explore this article for best practices on prompt writing.
  • Upload and analyze documents: Using the file upload feature, you can upload documents like PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets to be analyzed, summarized, compared, or to have data extracted from them.
  • Set up automation for routine tasks. Tap ChatGPT Edu to streamline time-consuming administrative tasks, such as drafting email templates for specific audiences, generating schedules and timelines for events, summarizing meetings and create agendas, turning spreadsheet data into narrative insights, and rewording messages for different platforms (newsletter, website, social media, etc.)

How to obtain ChatGPT Edu

Now that you are familiar with how to use ChatGPT Edu safely and responsibly, here's how to get it. 

  • ChatGPT Edu is available to UC Davis campus faculty and staff in spring 2025. UC Davis Health employees can contact their local IT unit for information about ChatGPT Edu. 
  • Annual subscriptions cost $240 per account. Information will be shared shortly about how to subscribe. 
  • Once you are subscribed, log in to ChatGPT Edu with your UC Davis email and passphrase at: https://openai.com/chatgpt.