The Impact of AI on Education: Opportunities and Challenges

Why AI chatbots make bad teachers - and how teachers can exploit that weakness

Developers and educators should push AI to stimulate students' curiosity. In the nearly three years since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst onto the scene, the use of artificial intelligence has invaded not only daily work and leisure but also the field of education. The Pew Research Center reports that a quarter of US adults consult a bot to learn something, up from 8% in 2023 -- almost as many as use them for work. The percentage is higher the higher one's level of education is, interestingly. That surge in usage had put teachers and professors in a quandary about students' propensity to use bots to get answers to questions rather than think through problems deeply. Pew reports that a large number of teachers fear a crisis in education. Also: ChatGPT's study mode could be your next tutor - and it's free Somewhat more nuanced, the scholarly journal Daedalus, in its issue on trends in education, last year concluded that "We cannot predict how education will be affected in the long term by large language models and other AI-supported tools, but they hold the possibility to both promote and distort current approaches to teaching and learning." So, what are educators -- and AI developers -- to do if the world has found a way around traditional education? OpenAI's answer to the question is a new feature introduced to ChatGPT last week, Study Mode, which my colleague Sabrina Ortiz explored. As Sabrina relates, Study Mode will respond to a prompt with a plan of study and ask questions about goals. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Also: How ChatGPT actually works (and why it's been so game-changing) I tested Study Mode as a way to learn a new language. I chose that activity because I've already used ChatGPT for a year now to try to study languages, which gave me a basis for comparison. In my experience, Study Mode adds very little to my efforts to learn a language. The differences with plain old ChatGPT are minor. And I had to make many efforts to steer Study Mode in the right direction. The lesson here is clear. As with all language models, you only get out of it what you put into it. You still have to craft good prompts or else you're left with something very general and not very interesting, in my opinion. That's true of Study Mode just as it is of other large language model-based programs. In other words, education in Study Mode results from the student's effort rather than the teacher's brilliance. Also: How to turn AI into your own research assistant with this free Google tool As a basic comparison, I asked Study Mode to help me learn to read and write in Japanese, a language I do not know. My prompt was: "I'd like to learn to read and write Japanese even though I'm an absolute beginner!" The results in Study Mode were nearly identical to those of ordinary ChatGPT. Study Mode began with a couple of questions about how I would like to proceed, while regular ChatGPT simply responded with its proposed lesson plan. In the accompanying screenshot, Study Mode is on the left, and ordinary ChatGPT is on the right. While it's not a bad idea to ask me about how I would like to proceed, as an absolute beginner, it's rather pointless because I don't know anything about what I'm going to learn. That's sort of the point of the teacher role. In both cases, ChatGPT suggested that we proceed by learning the basic characters of the native Japanese phonetic alphabet, the hiragana. We proceeded row by row, with me trying to repeat the hiragana that ChatGPT gave me. At one point, it became clear to me that simply learning hiragana one by one was not going to work. After about half an hour, I refused ChatGPT's suggestions to continue along the way we had been going, and instead asked the bot to give me many examples of real words using the characters I had already learned. This started to help me cement my knowledge of the characters. Also: I used ChatGPT's Study Mode to tutor me for free - and you can too None of this stimulated my curiosity very much with its rote exercises. To make it more interesting for myself, I prompted Study Mode, "How many hiragana are there altogether?" This was an example of a desire to understand the larger scope of the subject matter, and it only happened because I asked. ChatGPT's response was a nice explanation of the total number of hiragana. If I hadn't asked, I wouldn't have gotten such an interesting diversion. That's exactly the point. Without a suggestion from me, the bot didn't have great ideas for how to move forward. As Sabrina points out in her introductory article, Study Mode relies a lot on the "Socratic method" of question and answer. However, in the realm of AI, the enterprising user often has more interesting questions than the bot. Also: GPT-5 bombed my coding tests, but redeemed itself with code analysis That shouldn't be surprising. ChatGPT in study mode has been shaped to conform to the most common approaches to things. All language models tend to stay within what's likely, or highly probable, from moment to moment, which may be appropriate for reviewing material for a test but is not stimulating for a learner of anything. That is one of the reasons that ChatGPT and other bots are regularly acing the kinds of standardized tests where US students increasingly fail: The program has mastered the routine, the regurgitation of rote information. It's pretty clear that the bot lacks a higher level of understanding of what it means to teach someone, namely, what educators call a curriculum. A curriculum is a high-level understanding of how students learn and how to move through material -- documents, examples, etc. -- in a way that will not simply give answers but rather evoke the student's own ability to ask questions. Also: Has ChatGPT rendered the US's education report card irrelevant? In a good education, after all, one ends up with more questions than answers. Of course, we bot users aren't experts in curriculum, either. That's why we generally offer mostly the same prompts: "Explain to me...", "Tell me the reason why...", and "Help me learn X." As users, we're stuck when we don't know what to ask next. In the past year of on-and-off study, I haven't stuck with ChatGPT as regularly as I should if I really want to learn a language. As the novelty wore off, my resolve waned. There's a clear message for OpenAI and other AI developers here. Both Study Mode and normal ChatGPT are too much shaped to produce a kind of common ground in the typical exchange without any real sense of how to bring a student to the point of asking questions that open up their desire to learn more. Also: How AI-enabled autonomous business will change the way you work forever There's little innovation here, a lot of rote lesson plans. There's also a message for stressed-out teachers and professors here. It's natural for people to reach out for answers. If students are going to go to bots for answers, and they certainly are, then probably the right approach is to help them find ways to create more questions out of the bot rather than playing the cop and trying to prevent them from using bots. Why not flip things around? Why not help the students push the bot to the point where an entire topic has become sufficiently complex that the bot returns with more and more questions rather than simply providing answers like an authority? It might even be a group activity, where the teacher recedes from the leadership role and gets students to take the lead, to hash out how they are going to push the bot into all the regions of uncertainty. Also: College students can get Google's AI Pro plan for free now. Here's how Think of that as The New Curriculum, or, with a nod to today's programming methods, "Vibe Pedagogy," a way to hack the bot to get to something more interesting, more stimulating. Education is only at risk from AI if the teacher is assumed to be the final authority. If, instead, education is viewed as finding out just how much there is to know, how many open questions there are in a field of study, then there is no danger in students using technology to open up more and more questions. It's also a good way to integrate the study of a topic, such as the American Revolution, with the study of the machine itself, the bot. Students are likely to spend the rest of their adult lives interacting with the bot in some fashion. Get to know the bot -- its strengths and limitations. As mentioned above, the bots have aced all the standardized exams. There is no point in forcing humans to endure dull regurgitation of the facts. Much better would be to stimulate curiosity and question-asking, which humans still do better than bots. Also: Anthropic launches Claude for Education, an AI to help students think critically Because I asked how many hiragana characters there were, I decided to ask Study Mode a "meta" question, like a pesky child: Why are there only 76 Hiragana? It gave me a nice answer that didn't really answer the question but was more of a description:

This Google Labs experiment is even better than NotebookLM for studying

By now, it's well-established that AI has become an incredibly important part of education. Some use it to cheat, some use it to make studying a little easier, and some use it to learn faster and smarter. Admittedly, I've done both at some point, but I lean more toward using it to actually improve how I study and retain information. I've tested almost every AI tool I come across that claims to make studying easier, and Google's NotebookLM has so far been my favorite. It has genuinely useful features that are designed to actually help you study smarter, and not harder. You can convert your notes into podcast-style discussions, Mind Maps, study guides, and more -- all within minutes. Since I started using NotebookLM, I've tested a bunch of its competitors, dedicated study modes AI giants have released, like ChatGPT's Study Mode, but none of them really came close to it. That is, until I stumbled upon a Google Labs experiment that takes note-based studying to an entirely different level. Google is experimenting with a project called Learn About Make sure to try it yourself Some people don't know this, but NotebookLM actually started out as an experimental Google Labs project under the codename "Project Tailwind." If you aren't familiar with Google Labs, it's essentially the company's testing ground for new tools and experiments before they're released to the public. One day, while I was using NotebookLM, I suddenly thought, "Hey, if NotebookLM's so great, I wonder what else Google is experimenting with in Labs." A couple of days later, I went hands-on with a bunch of experiments Google is currently working on in Labs. One of these experiments included a learning tool called Learn About. I remember being really impressed with it back then, but I didn't really use it much at the time. Since it's back-to-school season, I've been actively looking for new tools to integrate into my studying workflow, and I was reminded of Learn About. Unlike the majority of Google Labs experiments, Learn About is strictly focused on "learning" and is an AI-powered learning companion. Though NotebookLM and Learn About are both designed for learning, the way they function is quite different: NotebookLM helps you understand your own sources, while Learn About is built to help you grasp topics and concepts, even if you don't already have notes or materials. Learn About is perfect for learning new concepts The AI tutor you didn't know you needed When you head to the Learn About website, you're greeted with a "What would you like to learn about?" page, where you can either ask the tool what you want to study or upload an image or PDF of it. The latter is a bit similar to what NotebookLM offers, allowing the AI to analyze your materials and help you learn from them more effectively. I decided to go with asking the tool a concept I'd like to understand directly, curious to see how it would break down and explain the topic. To test the tool out accurately, I decided to first go with a topic I'm not very familiar with. I have a linear algebra course this semester, so I chose a concept from that subject to see how well Learn About could guide me through it. I picked Matrix Multiplication, which is a topic I briefly studied in high school and remember nothing about. Even though I didn't bother prompting the tool with an in-depth question, Learn About immediately generated a clear, step-by-step explanation of matrix multiplication. It even linked to a YouTube video I could refer to in order to understand the topic better. In every query you ask, Learn About also displays different learning cards to help you reinforce your understanding. In this example, Learn About displayed a Stop & think and Build your vocab card. The former card essentially includes a brief question or prompt that encourages you to pause and actively apply what you just learned, while the latter explains a definition of the topic clearly. It also included an Interactive List, which covered the Key Requirements for Matrix Multiplication. On the left of the chat section, there was also a The big picture section, which was divided into three sub-sections: Understand the conditions required for matrix multiplication, Describe the process for calculating the elements of the product matrix, and Explain the overall concept of matrix multiplication as a combination of matrices. Each of these sections had different buttons, which you could click to expand detailed explanations. At the end of the response, Learn About suggested three follow-up questions and related content I could explore. I asked a few follow-up questions about the doubts I needed clarified, and by the end of it, I understood matrix multiplication much better than I expected, and also felt confident applying the concept to practice problems. You can learn more about any term with just a highlight Just highlight and explore One thing about it is that I always have a bunch of questions. The teacher assistants for my college courses are likely tired of seeing me in every office hours session. I'm the same way when using AI to study a concept and have a bunch of small questions about terms or phrases that pop up while I'm reading. Often, I just want to understand one term from a response the AI gave me. But with most AI tools (including NotebookLM), you need to type out a full, detailed query even for a single word or phrase. If you just type the word or phrase, tools often don't take your original query into context, forcing you to re-explain what you were asking about each time and slowing down your workflow. Learn About has an incredible highlighting feature that solves this problem. You can simply highlight any word or phrase in the response, and four options pop up: What is this?, See a picture, Search the web, and Ask about this. What is this? gives you a quick definition or explanation of the term. See a picture opens an image related to the topic or word, helping you visualize it. Search the web lets you quickly find more information online without leaving the tool. And Ask about this allows you to pose a more detailed question about the term or concept. This isn't a massive feature, but it's incredibly practical. It saves time, reduces friction in your studying, and makes it easy to get precise answers without breaking your focus or having to retype lengthy queries. Learn About > NotebookLM You won't catch me saying an AI tool beats NotebookLM often, but Learn About might just be the exception. It is essentially built by the same team at Google Labs, so I'm not surprised it's as thoughtful and polished as it is. Even if you aren't a student and just want to explore a topic or learn something new, I'd highly recommend giving Learn About a try.

Was Your Kid's Report Card Written By AI?

Rising seniors are the last class of students who remember high school before ChatGPT. But only just barely: OpenAI's chatbot was released months into their freshman year. Ever since then, writing essays hasn't required, well, writing. By the time these students graduate next spring, they will have completed almost four full years of AI high school. Gone already are the days when using AI to write an essay meant copying and pasting its response verbatim. To evade plagiarism detectors, kids now stitch together output from multiple AI models, or ask chatbots to introduce typos to make the writing appear more human. The original ChatGPT allowed only text prompts. Now students can upload images ("Please do these physics problems for me") and entire documents ("How should I improve my essay based on this rubric?"). Not all of it is cheating. Kids are using AI for exam prep, generating personalized study guides and practice tests, and to get feedback before submitting assignments. Still, if you are a parent of a high schooler who thinks your child isn't using a chatbot for homework assistance -- be it sanctioned or illicit -- think again. Read: AI cheating is getting worse The AI takeover of the classroom is just getting started. Plenty of educators are using AI in their own job, even if they may not love that chatbots give students new ways to cheat. On top of the time they spend on actual instruction, teachers are stuck with a lot of administrative work: They design assignments to align with curricular standards, grade worksheets against preset rubrics, and fill out paperwork to support students with extra needs. Nearly a third of K-12 teachers say they used the technology at least weekly last school year. Sally Hubbard, a sixth-grade math-and-science teacher in Sacramento, California, told me that AI saves her an average of five to 10 hours each week by helping her create assignments and supplement curricula. "If I spend all of that time creating, grading, researching," she said, "then I don't have as much energy to show up in person and make connections with kids." Beyond ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, educators are turning to AI tools that have been specifically designed for them. Using MagicSchool AI, instructors can upload course material and other relevant documents to generate rubrics, worksheets, and report-card comments. Roughly 2.5 million teachers in the United States currently use the platform: "We have reason to believe that there is a MagicSchool user in every school district in the country," Adeel Khan, the company's founder, told me. I tried out the platform for myself: One tool generated a sixth-grade algebra problem about tickets for Taylor Swift's Eras tour: "If the price increased at a constant rate, what was the slope (rate of change) in dollars per day?" Another, "Teacher Jokes," was underwhelming. I asked for a joke on the Cold War for 11th graders: "Why did the Cold War never get hot?" the bot wrote. "Because they couldn't agree on a temperature!" So far, much AI experimentation in the classroom has been small-scale, driven by tech-enthusiastic instructors such as Hubbard. This spring, she fed her course material into an AI tool to produce a short podcast on thermodynamics. Her students then listened as invented hosts discussed the laws of energy transfer. "The AI says something that doesn't make sense," she told her students. "See if you can listen for that." But some school districts are going all in on AI. Miami's public-school system, the third-largest in the country, initially banned the use of chatbots. Over the past year, the district reversed course, rolling out Google's Gemini chatbot to high-school classrooms where teachers are now using it to role-play historical figures and provide students with tutoring and instant feedback on assignments. Although AI initiatives at the district level target mostly middle- and high-school students, adults are also bringing the technology to the classrooms of younger children. This past year, Iowa made an AI-powered reading tutor available to all state elementary schools; elsewhere, chatbots are filling in for school-counselor shortages. Read: The Gen Z lifestyle subsidy Many schools still have bans on AI tools. A recent study on how kids are using AI in 20 states across the South and Midwest found that rural and lower-income students were least likely to say their schools permit AI use. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) offers one case study in what can go wrong when AI enters the classroom. This past school year, the district's curricula were seemingly tainted with AI slop, according to parents. In February, eighth graders viewed a slideshow depicting AI-generated art mimicking the style of the Harlem Renaissance. According to an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle written by two HISD parents, students were also given error-laden worksheets (one, on transportation technology, depicted a mix between a car and a chariot that was pulled by a horse with three back legs) and inscrutable discussion questions ("What is the exclamation point(s) to something that surprised you," one asked). An HISD spokesperson told me that the Harlem Renaissance images were indeed AI-generated using Canva, a graphic-design tool; he was unable to confirm whether AI was used in the other examples. None of this is slowing AI's rollout in schools. This spring, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting AI use in the classroom with the goal of training teachers to integrate "AI into all subject areas" so that kids gain an expertise in AI "from an early age." The White House's push to incorporate AI in K-12 education has repeatedly emphasized public-private partnerships, a call that tech companies already appear to be embracing. Last month, Microsoft pledged to give more than $4 billion toward advancing AI education across K-12 schools, community and technical colleges, and nonprofits. The same week as Microsoft's announcement, the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country's largest teachers unions, announced a $23 million partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. One of the partnership's first efforts is a "National Academy for AI Instruction," opening in New York City this fall, where instructors will learn how to use AI for generating lesson plans and other tasks. The program then plans to expand nationally to reach 10 percent of U.S. teachers over the next five years. Schools are stuck in a really confusing place. Everyone seems to agree that education needs an upgrade for the AI era. "Our students right now are going to be put at a disadvantage internationally if we don't evolve," Miguel Cardona, Joe Biden's education secretary, told me. But no one seems to agree on what those changes should look like. Since ChatGPT's release, the in-class essay, the oral exam, blue-book exams, and even cursive have all made something of a comeback in certain classrooms, in an effort to prevent students from outsourcing all their writing and thinking to AI. At the same time, AI aims to make work more efficient -- which is exactly what students are using it for. In that sense, whether kids using AI on their homework counts as cheating is "almost a semantic issue," argues Alex Kotran, a co-founder of the AI Education Project, a nonprofit focused on AI literacy. Of course, try telling that to a concerned parent. As Kotran points out, a middle ground exists between pretending students aren't using AI and encouraging them to rely on it nonstop. "Even if you believe that everybody is going to be using AI in the future," he told me, "it doesn't necessarily follow that the top priority should be getting students hands-on right away." Imagine if in 2007, schools had decided that the best way to prepare kids for the future was to force every student to spend all day in front of an iPhone. No matter what teachers', students', and parents' attitudes about AI in the classroom are, though, it's a reality they have to deal with. The path that schools take from here has direct implications for the future of AI more generally. The more reliant kids are on the technology now, the larger a role AI will play in their lives later. Once schools go all in, there's no turning back.

4 reasons I'm glad ChatGPT wasn't available when I was in college, and 1 reason why I wish it was

I finally replaced Gboard with SwiftKey and it's been a game-changer Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, the debate about how it should be used in education is ongoing. Some people believe that it harms students' ability to learn core critical thinking and reasoning skills, while others believe it is a powerful educational asset that can boost learning. I left university over five years ago, and in this time, the digital tools available to students have changed drastically. For those of us who have already graduated, it's easy to say how we're glad ChatGPT didn't exist, as we benefited from not being able to take shortcuts in our studies. While I believe that ChatGPT would have harmed my studies, I think there is one crucial area where it would have helped. ChatGPT isn't good at writing essays It's not going to get you a perfect grade As a History major, I spent most of my university years writing essays. Every week, I would be planning or writing a new essay, and that takes time. Due to the American education system, my General Education classes meant I also had to write essays and study for a variety of classes that had zero relevance to my major. I was consistently frustrated with how much time was taken up by irrelevant studies. All I cared about was passing the class, not retaining information. Theoretically, this sounds like the perfect use case for ChatGPT. Get ChatGPT to write up a few paragraphs on cellular biology, rewrite it myself, then submit it and use the saved time to study for my "important" classes. The temptation would have been irresistible, but I'm glad ChatGPT wasn't around. For classes related to my major, I wrote every essay and paper as a building block for the future. I took the time to study, correct my mistakes, and build up my knowledge so that my final thesis was as strong as possible. Using ChatGPT to draft my essays could have seriously damaged my education. So why didn't I use it for these irrelevant classes, where all I cared about was a pass? In short, ChatGPT isn't good at writing essays. It wasn't good on launch, and it isn't perfect now. Here are a few reasons why: It freely plagiarizes existing work. It makes up credible-sounding sources to back up arguments. It references irrelevant sources. It hallucinates content. Each of these hallmarks of generative AI is easy to spot. The best-case scenario is that I would have lost marks. The worst-case scenario is being accused of plagiarism. I was already barely scraping by with these classes. Why would I want to sabotage it more? Solving problems myself became the reason I studied Generative AI removes the satisfaction of success There are few better feelings than solving a problem you've been stuck on for hours, days, or even weeks. It's a feeling I came to live for in university. I've never cared for being top of the class or having a perfect GPA. I cared about making myself smarter. I saved every essay I wrote over my university years so I could go back and laugh at how terrible my writing was, then feel proud of how much I had improved. Looking back gave me immense satisfaction in my work and was the primary motivator to push forward. ChatGPT would have hollowed out that feeling. Even if I had only used it to assist with my research or review my writing, I would have felt less proud of my achievements knowing how much was thanks to generative AI. This would have reduced my motivation to push through tough problems and subjects, and therefore increased my reliance on ChatGPT. Knowing how close I came to failing in my harder classes, it's easy to see how I could have failed if my drive to succeed was gone. ChatGPT doesn't have the human touch It can't reason A common argument for using AI in an education setting is to answer questions. To many people, this is no different from plugging your query into Google. You're not asking ChatGPT to write something for you, just to tell you an answer. The common rebuttal to this is that, as AI hallucinates information, the answer you get may not be reliable. However, it's easy to double-check the answer ChatGPT gives you. The bigger problem for me is that ChatGPT isn't human. ChatGPT does an excellent job of pretending to be a person, so you can engage in realistic conversations and debates. While all the information it provides is accessible via a quick Google search, it's much easier to discuss your question and nail down the specifics with the chatbot in a conversational setting. However, it has nothing on a real person. I loved chatting with my professors about problems I had with my classwork. Whether I had a specific question or wanted feedback on an essay, my professors would always be willing to help me. However, the main reason I went to them was not to get my question answered; it was to talk to them. Teachers and professors have decades of experience in their topic, and can do things ChatGPT cannot. Plenty of my discussions with professors generated new ideas or theories that could only have come about in the context of our discussion. ChatGPT is not human and cannot create new ideas. Although it may pretend to have generated a new theory, this is all thanks to established patterns in the information it can access. Had I used ChatGPT in university to answer my questions, I would have missed out on the spontaneous generation of new ideas that made my university experience valuable. Knowing how to research is the foundation of my career ChatGPT stops you from practicing a vital skill The most valuable skill I learned from studying History at university was how to research. I had to uncover relevant sources, identify relevant information, spot misleading or unsubstantiated conclusions, and build all of this information into a cohesive thesis. Thanks to these skills, I can enjoy the career I have now. ChatGPT skips over the critical skills I needed to learn to research effectively. Every shortcut taken with ChatGPT would have reduced my effectiveness as a researcher and sabotaged my career. Why I wish I had ChatGPT in university It can create short tests in seconds The biggest problem I faced in university was my inherent aversion to studying. I had no problem sitting down and writing essays for hours at a time, but drawing up flashcards and highlighting textbooks was the bane of my university life. The best way I found to study was to find a partner, but this was challenging to organize consistently. One of the most useful implementations of AI is the ability to analyze and summarize information. Tools like NotebookLM can answer questions from your notes, and ChatGPT's Study Mode can test you with quizzes and open-ended questions. You can upload a document with all your class notes, then ask ChatGPT to create a quiz from your notes. While there is still a risk of ChatGPT hallucinating answers, it's still a fantastic study aid. Here, ChatGPT is prompting me to do my research and study, the reverse of asking ChatGPT for answers. This method encourages taking detailed notes and is easy to double-check. Having ChatGPT create a quick study quiz after each class would have helped with my studies immensely, as I could have tested my knowledge within minutes of opening the app. ChatGPT can be a powerful educational asset While I respect ChatGPT's Study Mode, the harms of generative AI outweigh the positives. However, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other generative AI tools are not going away. I am glad that ChatGPT did not exist during my time at university, but if I were entering university now, I would explore ways to use it to support my studies. Used responsibly, it is a powerful tool.

5 reasons I wish ChatGPT was available when I was in college

I was one of those students who would ask a million questions, interrupt lectures, and sometimes even be asked to leave the professor's office because I stayed past the designated hours. Asking questions is how I made concepts stick. Asking questions led me to more questions. It also kept me curious. Nowadays, I can't imagine myself bothering teachers with every little question. But it doesn't stop me from thinking. If ChatGPT had been available when I was still in school, I would definitely have been an early adopter. Fortunately, ChatGPT is easily accessible, even without a Go or Plus (formerly Plus and Pro) subscription. You can download the ChatGPT app or access it on a web browser-supported device, such as a Chromebook. 5 ChatGPT helps me learn how to frame my questions It can also provide self-clarity Being a good prompt writer versus someone who is starting out is quite different. This is because you may need to guide the AI model at times to find your answers. I'm someone who learns by asking questions. ChatGPT would be the perfect canvas for doing that. It would also reduce the time spent interrupting my lecture, as well as the time I spend in the office, since I could review the fundamentals with ChatGPT. I'd use ChatGPT to send in notes for extra context. Then ask questions based on the lesson. If I am stumped with my questions or ChatGPT can't come up with a response, I'd write those questions and ask my professor after class. ChatGPT can't replace your teacher, but it can be valuable for enhancing your learning. 4 ChatGPT could check my mistakes Identify your homework errors in minutes I took a lot of math and science courses. I love working with formulas. But most of them can be tricky when multiple steps are involved. I often needed someone to review my work to identify where I went wrong. But when working on problems late at night, it's not the most convenient time to contact someone to help me check my work. ChatGPT doesn't have a schedule (as long as your free prompts are not on cooldown). You can ask anything at any time. I can use ChatGPT to write out the problem and then outline my solution and steps. I'd ask ChatGPT to review my work and then guide me through the solution. ChatGPT has a study mode feature that provides more interactive feedback, including homework help, and excels at guiding the exploration of new concepts. You can enable it using the Study and learn tool in the chat prompt. Study mode is available on all plans. I severely needed this for my first-year Physics courses. I had a tutor because I struggled to understand the fundamentals. I was also unsure how to approach word problems. I never developed critical thinking because I couldn't recognize when I needed to apply formulas or what the practice question was asking me to find. Sometimes, even, my tutor encountered issues. My Physics professor wasn't very approachable. We had trouble communicating our struggles to him. That's where I would have loved to use ChatGPT. I can ask ChatGPT to simplify the problem. I'd also use ChatGPT to explain a concept from my notes by breaking it down into simpler terms at an elementary level. 3 ChatGPT could help me learn coding Being LLM-based has advantages One of my biggest regrets was shying away from the computational side of Chemistry. Our professor told us that if we wanted to pursue computational Chemistry, we had to take programming classes or learn on our own. The idea was daunting to me since I didn't have a background in it. Using ChatGPT to teach me the basics of coding and then completing practice exercises would have helped boost my confidence. I've only begun to learn on my own slowly, but so far, I've found that my results using ChatGPT are more consistent after I ask it to provide a step-by-step analysis of something I've included in the prompt. 2 ChatGPT could parse my notes Organize pages of notes in a specified format Depending on the course, my notes can sometimes be too detailed (almost like a transcription). I've found that the level of detail makes it hard to study. But I never had time to reorganize my notes, as I'd have around at least 10 pages or more of typed notes to parse through. ChatGPT would be a lifesaver for helping me reformat my notes. I could ask ChatGPT to organize my notes into subtopics, place formulas or definitions into tables, and then generate study questions based on my notes. My main way of studying concepts is using flashcards, especially when I need to memorize concepts from my Biology and Biochemistry courses. I could ask ChatGPT to create questions that work well for flashcards. Or even ask it to create a small practice test based on my notes. Overall, interacting with my notes was the most effective way for me to learn, particularly in classes that required extensive memorization. 1 ChatGPT could help me prepare for my future It is an invaluable tool for job-seeking When I was focusing on my studies, I lacked foresight into my future. I visited my campus's guidance office to help prepare me for the future. It was useful, but I also wish I had found help outside. I wish I had explored job prospects and ways to prepare for them more thoroughly. ChatGPT, while not perfect, has helped me frame cover letters and format my resume. It has also provided me with resources on relevant job portals and directed me to associations that I should explore. I've also learned more about the technical skills a field wants and ways I can get them. Most of the resources provided to me by my school were intended to help prepare me for graduate studies. I found it challenging to find jobs that only wanted my bachelor's experience. If I had known more, I might've taken a different path altogether or transferred to a program with available placements. While ChatGPT doesn't always provide the answers, it remains an indispensable resource. AI continues to shape our future AI influences how we interact with technology. Now it is incorporated into our studies and our workplace environments. If I ever return to full-time studies, I'll be using more tools from ChatGPT and Gemini to help alleviate stress, whether it is for setting up automations with Google Calendar or using them to manage my digital notebook. Plus, you can use AI to help you parse through videos and notes within minutes. Even if you don't see the immediate benefits, it is better to learn how to leverage it effectively, so you stay ahead of the game.

4 reasons why I wish NotebookLM was available while I was in college

8 Google Messages features that make texting on Android unbeatable When we talk about AI projects from Google, the conversation usually revolves around Gemini. As Google's most widespread and accessible AI feature, it's hard to use any of the tech giant's products and services without running into the generative AI chatbot. However, Gemini isn't just a chatbot. It powers other AI tools, including NotebookLM. NotebookLM is one of the best AI tools anywhere, and while I use it sporadically now, I wish I had access to it in university. NotebookLM's ability to generate summaries, explanations, and answers from uploaded documents is extraordinarily useful for anyone who juggles documents scattered across multiple places and document types. While it's not perfect, I think it's one of the best assets a college student can use in their studies. For me, a History graduate who had to juggle more documents than I could process at one time, it would have been a powerful assistant. Here's why. 4 NotebookLM can analyze multiple document types No need to flip back and forth between tabs Much of my research as a student was in physical media. This time-consuming process was rewarding, but the lack of digital shortcuts meant I erred on the side of caution when taking notes. Whereas in a digital PDF I could bookmark pages for later, or add a comment with a single click, my references for physical media were usually lists of page numbers with one- or two-word descriptions. This worked, but it meant a lot of wasted time going back and forth to double-check whether a note was relevant. Many of these references did turn out to be irrelevant, but I had to waste time scouring books to check. Alongside my physical media and relevant notes were class notes, PDFs, digital books, and website links. It was a mess of different document types, and I spent hours sorting them all into text documents for easy reference. NotebookLM could have removed the need for this process entirely. Upload a document with a compatible file type, and NotebookLM can reference all of them when you ask it a question. For example, if I were looking for information about a topic, NotebookLM can check audio files, scanned PDFs, websites, and documents for an answer. Not needing to spend hours sorting all my notes into one document would have saved me hours of administrative work. I don't need to worry about NotebookLM hallucinating content, as in this scenario, I am using it to point me towards notes that I've already verified as authentic. 3 NotebookLM lets you visualize data how you want A format for everyone When you have thousands of words across audio, video, and text documents, it's hard to take it all in at a glance. Perhaps you prefer to listen to an audio summary or create a mind map of the key elements of your notes. NotebookLM can create an audio overview, video overview, mind map, study guide, briefing doc, FAQ, and timeline from your documents. Depending on your documents, you may find some of these formats more useful than others. As a student juggling multiple documents, I would have found the study guide format particularly useful. NotebookLM generates a short quiz, a series of essay-format questions, and a glossary of key terms. When I started a new project, I regularly felt overwhelmed by the amount of information at my disposal. These prompts would have helped me reinforce my understanding of my sources, so when I came to write up my research, I had a stronger idea where to start. I'm less keen on the audio or video formats. While I could see the audio format being useful for people who struggle to absorb information visually, it's much harder to spot mistakes made by NotebookLM. Any tool powered by generative AI is capable of hallucinating sources and information, and NotebookLM shines when it references where it has pulled summaries from. The audio and video formats do not clearly indicate where they pull information from. 2 NotebookLM makes it easy to double-check its information Good for verifying information and further research One of the reasons I'm glad tools like Gemini and ChatGPT weren't around when I was in college is their tendency to hallucinate information. While we all know that we should verify everything found on the internet, it's easy to skip this step when you're in a rush. Generative AI chatbots often put links to their sources at the end of summaries, but these often require you to hunt through the entire document for the exact reference. NotebookLM adds a source link after each statement in a summary. Click this link, and it'll take you directly to the section of the document where it pulled the information from. After uploading a document to NotebookLM, I can check every single statement in minutes. The only problem is that while NotebookLM lets you save its summaries to a separate note, you can't directly edit these generated responses. You can copy the text into a note for editing yourself, but this removes the source links. Despite this issue, NotebookLM's citations not only compensate for one of the biggest failings of generative AI, but also help you research a document yourself. If I had access to this feature in university, I could have understood the context of a document in minutes, and had pre-generated launching off points for further research. 1 NotebookLM makes it hard to lose valuable documents It can summarize the accumulated notes of an entire university career Over the course of my college life, I accumulated hundreds of documents, from PDF copies of books to pages of Word docs containing class notes to audio recordings of guest lectures. As I built my pyramid of knowledge over the years, many of these documents were lost or buried in forgotten folders. Much of this information was valuable, and I would frequently waste time digging for a half-remembered note or paper of relevance to my current work years later. If NotebookLM were around in my first year at college, I could have chucked every single document I own into the app. NotebookLM's separate notebooks would have let me sort them by subject, but the result is akin to a personal librarian. NotebookLM can answer queries with sources from documents years old, with links so I can head back and check them. I shudder to think of how many valuable notes and papers I lost due to my poor organization. NotebookLM could have made sure no document was wasted. NotebookLM encourages you to do the work yourself There is plenty of legitimate criticism leveled at the use of AI in education. From ChatGPT creating completed essays for students to Gemini hallucinating sources, there is evidence that AI can seriously damage students' education. However, generative AI is here to stay, so we must learn to use it responsibly and identify where it can help, not hinder us. As a student, I wasted hours performing basic organizational tasks that did not serve to help my education. Tools like NotebookLM do the organizational work for you, then provide helpful jumping-off points for your own research. I can see how NotebookLM can be abused to skip tedious research tasks, but for anyone taking their studies seriously, it's an incredibly powerful asset. If only I were able to use it.

ChatGPT in College: 7 Essential Tips to Avoid Trouble

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have taken education by storm, and schools and colleges have been caught off-guard. Students, and even some educators, have embraced this new technology with enthusiasm, but it's still the Wild West out there. So if you're thinking of using ChatGPT (or something like it), in your new semester or year of study, there are some essential things you should know to avoid gettig into serious trouble, or simply doing more harm than good to your own educational journey. 7 It's a Tool, Not a Shortcut It's important to remember why you're studying in the first place. Many college students are motivated by the end-goal. I.e. getting a degree so that it will unlock opportunities for you later in life. However, that piece of paper is meant to be symbolic of the knowledge, skills, and competencies you've developed during your studies. While a tool like ChatGPT can really supercharge your learning if you use it right, if you misuse it you'll end up learning nothing and gaining no skills or competencies of your own. Even with a degree under the belt, it's very hard to start a career. Doing that with a degree you didn't earn and a total lack of preparation will just result in disaster. 6 Your Professors Will Notice Lazy AI Work While AI detection tools don't work, and realistically can't ever work as AI output becomes truly indistinguishable from real human writing, you may feel pretty confident getting an all-clear from these tools when running generated text through them. However, these AI text generation bots aren't yet sophisticated enough to create anything more than mediocre D-grade work at the college level. Your professor might not know for sure that your work was generated by an AI, but they will know it's of middling quality and contains no original thought. While they might not be able to prove you didn't write the work yourself, that doesn't prevent them from giving you the grade that lazy work deserves. 5 Plagiarism Policies May Include AI Use While colleges have been slow to respond to ChatGPT suddenly dropping in on them, official policies around academic dishonesty and conduct are being updated across the world. They know about AI, they've used it, evaluated it, and have put guidelines into place. This means that if you use AI in a way that goes against the policy, and they can prove it somehow, you'll be in hot water. That said, most institutions recognize that generative AI is here to stay and that it will be part of the real-world working environment for you after graduation. So, in most cases, AI use isn't being banned, it's just being regulated. This usually means there's a list of things you are allowed to use ChatGPT or other similar tools for, and rules on when and where you need to disclose it. Follow these rules to the letter and you're going to be just fine. 4 ChatGPT Can Be Wrong (Confidently So) All AI chatbots suffer from "hallucinations" where the bot will confidently make up facts that aren't true. Because the chatbot is articulate and convincing, you might simply accept that what it says is true, because you don't have the expertise to evaluate what it tells you. Tools like ChatGPT are most useful in the hands of someone who is already a subject expert, because they can usually sniff out mistakes or reasoning errors. If you don't actually know anything about the subject, you're likely to get burned by this issue. This is why you should double-check every factual statement the chatbot makes. This is actually an excellent way to build your own expertise, because critically engaging with a text is exactly the sort of intellectual exercise that turns you into an expert. 3 It's Great for Brainstorming, Not Copy-Pasting As a writer, I use ChatGPT as a way to boost my productivity, but not in the way you might think. I don't use the bot to actually write anything for me, but instead I use it as a brainstorming tool. The hardest part of my job isn't the actual writing bit. I can do that better and faster than ChatGPT any day of the week, given that I would effectively have to edit and rewrite all of its output before being happy with it anyway. It would take more time, not less! No, instead the best thing about ChatGPT is that you can use it as an endless idea generator. You can engage in a back-and-forth with it to come up with ideas, then explore those ideas and drill down into the structures of arguments, or what issues should be included in the discussion. It's also an awesome tool to get instant editorial feedback. This means you can improve your grades not by having ChatGPT do the work for you, but by having it collaborate with you to prepare a plan, and then give feedback on your drafts to polish it up. This is the best of both worlds, because you've done the mental work expected of you, and you'll learn through the feedback loop as you polish your work. 2 You Can Use It to Understand, Not Just Generate The best way to really understand a topic isn't to simply read a textbook or attend a lecture. It's when you engage in a dialogue with someone else, and wrestle with those ideas. This is why it's valuable to have debates even with other students on the same level as you, but also with experts. It's not just about absorbing facts, education in a field is meant to help you learn how to think like someone from that field. Lawyers, scientists, and other professionals have a particular way of looking at the world that suits the needs of the professions. You can learn all the facts you want about the human body, but that doesn't make you a doctor. Thinking like a doctor and applying that knowledge within a specific framework is what being a doctor really is. Something like ChatGPT can't replace having this experience with real humans, but it can certainly augment and simulate it. You can use it to build your debating skills and have it challenge you. It might be helpful to learn how to make ChatGPT personas, such as telling ChatGPT that it should act like an architect or an anthropologist, depending on your needs. 1 It Won't Replace Your Sources or Citations You can't cite generative AI as a source in your work ever. Mainly because it can't be trusted not to make up facts. This isn't just true for ChatGPT or AI chatbots specifically, but any service that generates answers using AI. For example, the AI Overviews at the top of some Google searches cannot be used as a source, as it can also just make stuff up. The best strategy here is to ask the bot to provide the sources for its facts and then read those sources yourself to verify that it's telling the truth. Then you should cite those sources, assuming they meet the quality criteria set out in your course. One of the most important skills that any student should learn today is how to use AI tools effectively to make them more productive, more knowledgeable, and more competent. You can use the AI to support you while you spend more time doing things that have the biggest impact on your learning. Just be careful that you don't lean on these tools so much that you come out less smart than you went in!

These Are the Best Free AI Tools for Anyone Heading Back to School

I Build Lightning-Fast Lookup Formulas With These Excel Functions With AI now, the back-to-school season feels a lot different than it used to, in the best way possible. There are a bunch of free AI tools out there that you should be using for studying smarter, and there's no better time to start exploring them than right now. 5 NotebookLM My favorite AI tool that I rely on heavily for college is Google's AI-powered research assistant, NotebookLM. The tool is packed with features that make understanding complex topics and revising way easier, and I simply can't imagine beginning the school year without it. For instance, how many times have you had to sit through lengthy readings? Sure, there are a lot of AI tools out there that can summarize content, but which tool can convert that content into an AI-generated podcast? Well, NotebookLM's Audio Overviews feature does exactly that. It takes your sources and turns them into short, engaging audio explainers you can listen to on the go. NotebookLM also recently got a new Video Overviews feature, which can turn your sources into visually engaging, bite-sized explainers. Think of them as Khan Academy-like videos, but made specifically from your own materials. Another feature that's invaluable for students is NotebookLM's Mind Maps. Sometimes, when you're dealing with a lot of content at once, it helps to visualize how all the concepts connect to each other. That's exactly what NotebookLM helps with. It pulls key points from your notes and lays them out in a visual web, showing how everything ties together. Now, you might find other AI tools that have all the features I just mentioned. But what makes NotebookLM stand out from the vast majority of them is its source-grounded nature. What this essentially means is that NotebookLM only references the material you feed it. This solves a huge problem most AI tools suffer from: AI hallucinations. NotebookLM doesn't make things up or pull random information from the internet. Instead, it sticks strictly to the sources you've uploaded. So when it gives you an answer, you know exactly where it came from. Though NotebookLM has a paid tier too, I've been using its free version since day one, and honestly, it's more than enough for what I need as a student. 4 Perplexity As a student, you can't run away from researching. It's a huge part of academic life. Whether it's for an assignment, a paper, or even just understanding a tough concept, you're constantly looking things up. While there was once a time when I'd Google everything and open ten tabs hoping one of them had what I needed, Perplexity is one tool that's completely changed the game, and I can't recommend it enough. Perplexity is an AI-powered web search engine that uses AI to search the web in real time for you. Unlike most AI tools that just generate responses based on past data, Perplexity actually pulls information from live sources and cites them right there in the answer. A lot of times, I have a question in mind but don't really know how to phrase it the right way. In those situations, Google is pretty hit or miss. But with Perplexity, it's different. You can type out your question however it naturally comes to you, and it still manages to understand what you mean. What's great is that it gives you a well-rounded response and provides citations to all the sources it used. Additionally, if you struggle to figure out how to dive deeper into a topic, Perplexity suggests follow-up questions related to what you're researching that help guide you. This has helped me identify sub-topics I missed multiple times, and it's the best way to figure out what angles or areas I should be looking into next. Similar to NotebookLM, Perplexity's free version is more than powerful enough for the typical student. 3 StudyAnything One of the biggest things I struggle with as a student is trying to recall information during exams. I have the memory of a goldfish, and I forget answers to questions as soon as I memorize them. Given that I have a lot of memorization-heavy courses every semester, I can't just not memorize and hope for the best. I needed a way to make the information actually stick. For the most part, I rely on creating flashcards. When I realized how much time I spend creating them, I turned to AI-powered flashcard tools instead, and that worked well. But if you've studied with flashcards before, you're likely familiar with how boring revision can get sometimes. So, I started to look for a free tool that could help me gamify actively learning something, and I found StudyAnything. All you need to do is create an account, create a course you're studying, and upload the files you'd like to learn from. For instance, I uploaded my lecture slides. StudyAnything will then process them and prompt you to select the exact sub-topics you want to be tested on. Within minutes, a detailed quiz focused on the topics you chose will be generated. You can use StudyAnything to track your progress over time and repeat the quiz to target your weak areas. The tool is currently in beta, and I couldn't find any information about a premium plan. So, for now, it's completely free. 2 ChatGPT ChatGPT needs no introduction. Ironically, a couple of days ago, I'd have hesitated to recommend it as a go-to tool for students. There are just better AI tools out there, but ChatGPT's simply the most well-known. That said, OpenAI recently added a Study Mode to it and that just flipped the script big-time. If you've used ChatGPT to study a new concept or even do an assignment (or any AI chatbot, for that matter), you might've noticed that the AI's intent has always primarily been to quickly give you the answer. Sure, that's helpful when you're in a rush and just trying to wrap up that one assignment due at 11:59 p.m. But when you're actually trying to learn, that approach isn't helpful at all. That's exactly where Study Mode comes in. Instead of simply giving you the final answer, ChatGPT walks you through how to get to the answer by giving you bite-sized, Socratic-like steps. It won't tell you the answer even if you ask. For instance, I switched to ChatGPT's Study Mode to learn how to solve a trigonometric equation. With the standard model, the AI would give me the entire solution and answer in one go. With Study Mode though, ChatGPT explained the first step to me and asked me to do it myself. It moved on to the next step once I shared my answer. It's like having an interactive tutor that's determined to help you succeed. ChatGPT's Study Mode is powered by custom system instructions and was built in collaboration with teachers, scientists, and pedagogy experts. In addition to solving questions, you can use ChatGPT's Study Mode to learn a topic from scratch. It'll ask you a series of questions to assess your current skill level and tailor the learning experience. What's great about Study Mode is that it isn't only limited to ChatGPT's paid Plus, Pro, and Team accounts. All free users can benefit from it too. 1 Speechify When you have six courses a semester, exams and quizzes every week, and assignment deadlines always lurking around the corner, finding the time to sit down and read through lengthy readings and assignment briefs can be a struggle. NotebookLM's Audio Overviews feature I mentioned above can certainly help with that, but only to an extent. It gives you a podcast-style summary, not a full audio version of the actual text. That's where Speechify comes in. It reads documents as-is, so you can listen to your readings word-for-word. Though Speechify's premium plans are a lot more powerful, the free plan is decent enough. You can upload different file formats like PDFs, DOC, DOCX, TXT, EPUB, and even paste web links. Within seconds, you'll be able to start listening to the content without needing to read a single line yourself. I find it super helpful when my eyes are tired, or I just need to multitask. I've also used it to listen to essays I've written for assignments to catch awkward phrasing or small mistakes I might've missed while reading silently. It's a simple trick, but hearing your own work read back to you can make a big difference. On the free version, you can listen to the text-to-speech audio at up to 1.2x speed and choose from 10 voices. Unfortunately, all the voices are robotic-sounding, which I'm not the biggest fan of. To get access to "high quality, natural voices," you need to upgrade to the premium plan. Speechify's paid plans also unlock advanced features beyond text-to-speech, like AI summaries and chat, but you can do the same thing with NotebookLM for free, without spending a penny. All the AI tools listed above helped me tremendously with my last few semesters, and I can't recommend them enough. None of them lock their best features being paywalls either, so you don't need to worry about messing up your budget just to get good grades!

I Tried Every Free Learning App -- Here Are the Ones That Actually Helped Me

You'll Never Pay Full-Price for School Equipment With These Sites and Apps Studying isn't easy. Thankfully, there's no shortage of learning apps promising to make it less painful. I tried the most popular free ones to find out which are truly worth your time. 5 MathGPT I'm currently majoring in computer science, which a lot of people describe as a glorified math degree. Given how many math-heavy courses I have every semester, I'm always on the lookout for tools that can make studying those courses a little easier. MathGPT is an AI tool I first covered when it was still fairly new in October 2024. I've been a loyal user since then, and it's hands-down one of the best learning apps out there. MathGPT, developed by two Cornell students, is designed to help students understand and solve complex math problems step-by-step, rather than just spitting out the final answer. Though there are plenty of math AI tools that can give you step-by-step solutions, what makes MathGPT stand out is that you can ask it questions about the solution as you go. If a particular step doesn't make sense, you can have it rephrase the explanation or break it down into smaller sub-steps. As someone who always asks professors and TAs a million questions after classes and during office hours, the best way to describe MathGPT is as a patient tutor. If you're like me and don't always understand solutions when they're typed out, MathGPT's Video Explanations feature can help you with that too. Within minutes, the AI tool can convert any question you have or concept you want to understand into a short video explanation. Think of it as a custom Khan Academy lesson, just tailored to the exact problem you're working on and the way you learn best. Instead of sifting through a 15-minute YouTube video hoping it covers your specific question, you get a targeted explanation that focuses on the part you're struggling with. MathGPT also has other learning features that I've found really helpful. For instance, you can prepare for upcoming examinations by generating custom practice tests. If you're someone who learns best from flashcards, the tool can also instantly create engaging flashcards on any topic within seconds. Though MathGPT's name suggests it's limited to only mathematics, that's actually not the case. The tool can also help with other STEM subjects including accounting, physics, and chemistry. As with most tools nowadays, MathGPT has a premium tier priced at $9.99/month. If you opt for the annual plan, the cost comes down to $6.99/month. However, I've been using the free tier for months, and I've crammed for one too many exams with it to confidently say the free version is more than enough for most students. For budget-conscious students (which, let's be honest, is most of us), that makes MathGPT a no-brainer to at least try. 4 Quizlet If you're a student, chances are you've stumbled upon Quizlet at some point. Quizlet's one of the most well-known study platforms out there, and it's all because of its flagship flashcard feature. I've been using the app since my high school days, when I gave my GCSEs, and it's one of the few learning tools I've consistently stuck with over the years. What makes Quizlet an excellent learning tool is the sheer volume of user-generated content available on the platform, with millions of flashcard sets spanning nearly every subject imaginable. When I began using Quizlet, I'd primarily create my own flashcard sets tailored to whatever exam I was preparing for, but over time I realized how convenient it was to tap into the vast library already available. Unlike a lot of flashcard apps, it's also extremely easy to use and has all the features you'd expect. It also has a Learn mode that analyzes your current understanding of what you're studying, and then tests you on the concepts you're weakest at until you've mastered them. This approach makes studying far more efficient, especially when you're short on time and need to focus on filling specific knowledge gaps rather than reviewing what you already know. Unfortunately, Quizlet does lock its AI-powered features behind its premium tiers. But I've never really felt the need for them, and there are a bunch of other AI-powered flashcard generators where you can find the same features for free. So, if you're someone who learns best from flashcards, Quizlet is one of those must-have apps that you'll find yourself coming back to again and again. 3 Photomath If you're wondering why I included two math AI tools in the same list, it's because Photomath and MathGPT serve slightly different purposes. MathGPT's great for walking you through complicated problems step-by-step and helping you clear any doubts along the way. But sometimes, you just want a quick solution to a problem or simply want to verify a final answer without going through a lengthy explanation. Photomath is simply the best tool for this purpose. It's only available on mobile and tablet, and as the name suggests, the app lets you solve problems just by snapping a picture of them. Close Photomath has gotten me through everything from high school courses like basic algebra and trigonometry to college-level classes like multivariable calculus. The best part is that Photomath doesn't just give you the answer and leave you hanging. It shows you a few steps so you can understand how the problem was solved. For more detailed, step-by-step solutions and animated tutorials, you'll need to subscribe to its premium tier. In my experience, the free version shows enough steps to give you a solid understanding of most problems. But like I mentioned, I primarily use Photomath for quick checks and straightforward problems, so the free version has always been more than enough for me. For more advanced questions where I want an in-depth explaination and need to clarify my doubts, I'll always choose MathGPT. I've been using Photomath way before I started using MathGPT, and it's helped me learn and reinforce core concepts countless times over the years. 2 NotebookLM One AI tool I'll never shut up about when it comes to studying is NotebookLM. If you aren't familiar with it, NotebookLM is Google's AI-powered personalized research assistant that lets you upload your own documents, notes, or PDFs and then interact with them like you would with a tutor. What makes NotebookLM stand out from most AI tools is its source-grounded nature. This essentially means the tool only references the material you feed it (in the form of sources or via conversation history). Ultimately, NotebookLM doesn't search the web or rely on its own pre-existing knowledge to answer your questions. Everything it tells you comes directly from the content you've provided. Thanks to this, you don't have to worry nearly as much about the AI hallucinating or giving you wrong information. I've had other AI tools confidently feed me completely incorrect answers before, which I foolishly wrote in my exams -- a mistake I'd rather not repeat. Other than NotebookLM's source-grounded nature, the features it packs are what really make it shine. You can convert your notes into podcast-style discussions called Audio Overviews, video summaries that break down complex topics visually called Video Overviews, or even into Mind Maps. It's the perfect tool if you'd like to see how ideas across different documents you've uploaded connect. In my last few semesters, I've relied heavily on NotebookLM, and it's helped me through multiple cramming sessions. Like all the tools above, NotebookLM has a premium tier, but its free version has been more than sufficient. I use it daily, and I'm yet to hit the limits of what the free tier can handle. 1 Bonus: ChatGPT's Study Mode Up until a couple of days ago, the last tool I expected to include in this list is ChatGPT. It gives more incorrect answers than I'd like, hallucinates quite a bit, and has always prioritized getting you the answer to a question first. While that can be useful sometimes, it's not ideal when you actually want to understand a concept thoroughly. After all, I won't have ChatGPT next to me during my exams to explain things if I don't understand them fully. What completely changed my mind is ChatGPT's new Study Mode. When you switch to this mode, instead of simply spitting out the answer, ChatGPT guides you to the answer step by step. It breaks the question or concept down in Socratic fashion, prompting you to think critically at each step and encouraging active learning rather than passive reading. Though Google added a similar feature to Gemini called Guided Learning, we tested both OpenAI and Google's dedicated study modes, and ChatGPT was the clear winner. I've tested nearly every learning tool I could get my hands on, and the ones above are by far the most effective for actually understanding and retaining material.

I Was Using ChatGPT to Study All Wrong Until This Prompt Fixed It

I Keep These Portable Windows Tools on a USB Stick to Use Anywhere Your AI is only as good as your prompt. I've been using ChatGPT for studying ever since its release, but it wasn't until I tried this one prompt that it completely changed the way I learn. 1 Give ChatGPT the Right Starting Point I still use NotebookLM, but only for its Audio Overview podcasts and AI-generated mind maps. I rarely bother with its summaries or Q&A anymore. ChatGPT, despite their differences, is the more capable AI. My workflow starts with ChatGPT's projects feature. I upload my notes and lecture files there. Then, I give it context about what these files are. ChatGPT pulls ahead of NotebookLM because my notes are written by me and my classmates, which means they're imperfect. NotebookLM relies soely on the content you feed it, so if something's missing or wrong in my notes, its answers will be wrong too. For ChatGPT, I use the notes as a guide. They help it see what topics I'm studying and which subtopics matter to me. That gets it operating on the same wavelength I am. Next, I upload a PDF of quiz questions I've already answered and ask ChatGPT to solve them itself and explain each answer. It's important to remember that ChatGPT -- and every other LLM -- can only handle so much in a single response. If you ask it to answer 100 questions at once, it's far more likely to make mistakes. The context window is good, but not limitless. I've found it works best to ask it to break them into batches of five and set a simple keyword to signal when it should move on. This approach keeps the pace manageable. I can stop after each batch, dig deeper into a tricky question, and only then tell it to continue -- rather than sitting through a massive reply and trying to respond after it's already finished. Not only do I get to check my own answers with ChatGPT's, but the answers and the pearls from them are now inside our conversation. ChatGPT can reference these for future tasks. 2 Add Your Own Pearls to the Conversation Once we're through with the questions, I paste my own note -- a collection of pearls on the topic I'm preparing for. I don't tell it to do anything right away. I just send the pearls for it to process. Step-by-step works best. Once it's read them, I ask: "Okay cool. Can we now organize and structure all the pearls in this conversation into a bullet list? Use markdown for headings." I like being conversational in my prompts. Not because it's some secret ChatGPT prompting hack, but because being polite feels right. ChatGPT formats everything neatly in Markdown, ready to copy into my Obsidian vault. You've probably done similar things before, but the real magic is what comes next. Again, that summary note isn't just for me. When ChatGPT needs to recall context, it no longer has to scroll through a dozen messages. It has a clean, concise reference right there. This is critical for the next step. 3 Use This Prompt to Really Learn Once I've gone through all my material and feel confident, it's time to boost recall. Flashcards work, and I use AI-generated flashcards for memorization-heavy courses. But they're static and there's no feedback loop when you get something wrong. I prefer open-ended questions. I don't want to guess the answer, I want to know it. With ChatGPT, I can answer one question at a time and get an immediate explanation -- something multiple-choice flashcards will never give me. Here's the line that made changed my study sessions forever: "Quiz me on the material in your project files and the pearls we went over in this conversation. Ask one by one, and once I answer, tell me if I was correct or wrong, explain, then move on to the next. OK?" The first reply is just one question. I can write out my thought process so it understands my reasoning and can guide me better. Even typos don't matter -- it knows what I meant. If I get the answer right but still feel shaky on the topic, I can ask it to go deeper before we move on. If I get it wrong, the explanation is instant, and we can clarify before tackling the next question. Close This makes ChatGPT a dynamic, endlessly patient tutor that adapts to my weaknesses. 4 Finish With a Review To wrap it all up -- and because we've now generated fresh material from my answers and ChatGPT's explanations -- I end the session with this prompt: "Let's write all the pearls we've talked about here in full detail in a single markdown message. It should be organized and structured with headings. Include explanations where needed. I want to review it before the exam!" This turns the entire conversation into a neatly organized study sheet that I can use on exam day. Quizzes have always been one of the best ways to study. But, most educators choose multiple-choice because they're easier to grade, not because they're the most effective. Sure, they're easier for the student too, but they have far less educational value. You've never truly mastered a topic if you can't answer without having the choices in front of you. ChatGPT is the one tool that can endlessly grade my answers, explain them, and keep throwing more questions my way. It's perfect.