How Google’s AI-powered tools will help students with exam prep

Google I/O 2024 centred around an ‘AI-First’ future had something in store for everyone, ranging from homemakers and artists to small business owners, as well as students. For students in particular though, there were a few particularly exciting announcements.

Two of the major announcements were NotebookLM, which now gets a new Gemini 1.5 Pro-powered upgrade and LearnLM, a new family of models based on Gemini. Both are tailored towards helping students and teachers alike.

Gemini 1.5 Pro-powered text summarisation and audio overviews on NotebookLM

First up, we have NotebookLM, which has received a Gemini 1.5 Pro integration. What this allows it to do, is create an intelligent summary of all your notes, slide decks, and PDFs for quick reference. In addition, it even generates study guides, organising topics into a Q&A format, FAQs, and quizzes too.

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That’s not the most exciting bit though. NotebookLM also now gets an ‘Audio overview’ feature. What this does is take all the information you feed in and create a spoken discussion from it. Doing this will help you listen to information and understand it better, as if you’re learning from a tutor. At any point in time, you can even join the discussion, and ask NotebookLM to explain concepts to you in a manner best suited to you, or switch between topics.

A demo showcased by Josh Woodward, VP at Google Labs shows him asking NotebookLM to teach his son Jimmy the laws of physics, using an example from basketball. Audio overview quickly went on to explain how basketball is a great example to visualise the workings of force and motion, and how the sport is connected to physics.

NotebookLM can now, in essence, provide a personalised learning experience tailored to students of different ages, across different fields and specialisations.

LearnLM and Google Gems: Your own personalised AI-powered tutor

Next, we have LearnLM. Based on Gemini, LearnLM will be extended across platforms, including Android, YouTube, and Search. What it does, in essence, is create “Gems” for you – subject matter experts across different subjects and specialisations.

It pulls information from the web and presents it to students in a concise and easy-to-understand manner. This saves them the hassle of having to go through several different sources on the web or YouTube videos, as well as textbooks and research papers themselves.

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These can help not just students understand their course material better, but also help teachers in interacting with their students better.

One of these Gems, for example, is called ‘Learning Coach’. Say you present it with a question, asking it to prove the equation for photosynthesis. While it does give you an answer, it doesn’t leave it at that. Learning Coach on the Gemini app will also show you a step-by-step breakdown of how it arrived at the answer.

LearnLM on Circle to Search

What’s cool is, Google’s Circle to Search feature, first unveiled with Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S24 series of smartphones, also now gets a LearnLM integration. This feature, for now, helps students solve Math and Physics problems.

All you have to do is circle it on your smartphone screen, and LearnLM will generate a step-by-step guide for you to arrive at the answer, without giving it away directly. By teaching you how to get there, it ensures your exam prep is on-point, and guarantees you that A grade in your upcoming mid-terms!

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With these two new features, Google will perhaps become more integral a tool in students’ lives than ever, making getting through the barrage of assignments, term papers, and exams that they would usually otherwise dread, a breeze.

Both NotebookLM with Gemini 1.5 Pro and LearnLM will be rolled out globally for students on their smartphones, laptops and tablets in the coming months.