The New Way of Learning - NotebookLM

Hey fellow Students and fellow future Students!

Life has been busy due to many exams stacking up but I wanted to share my latest experience in studying for exams using NotebookLM.

If you haven’t heard of it: NotebookLM is a free tool from Google where you can upload any PDF or other file and let the AI figure out the content. Then you can ask it about the content, create summaries or mind maps and - the best thing ever - create personalised Podcasts about the slides!

Personally, I spent many hours a few listening to podcasts so this helped me tremendously during the exam prep but also with other content I am just interested in. Basically you can create a podcast about every topic you have sources from.

So here is how it looked like in the Exam week:

1. Upload Slides to NotebookLM

2. Click on “Customize” in the Studio overview and prompt something like “I’m preparing for an Exam, show me the concepts and explain the methods. Use examples, speak slow and clearly.”

Note: Below is a more sufficient prompt. You can choose a length, I suggest to go for default (around 20 min usually) because short is most often very short, meaning you miss most concepts of the sources, if you upload multiple.

3. Let NotebookLM do the Magic ✨🦄

4. Enjoy the podcast! Ensure to make some notes to get the most out of it.

Note: You can even live interact with the podcast and ask questions during the episode! How cool is that?

This “new way” of learning has helped me especially well to get the overlying connection of course content. If you follow a course for many weeks it is not always obviously how all the methods and concepts discussed align with each other.

Pro-Tip: I’ve tried to write assignment only using the podcast study method but it is not sufficient enough for a higher grade. I would suggest to use this method while also looking at the slides provided.

I hope you find some value with that! 😎

Enjoy your summer break and use your time wisely.

Cheers,