Google’s AI tools and experiments are a dime a dozen, and many of them have crossover features. NotebookLM — its popular AI-powered research assistant — is a powerful tool that can turn your boring notes into works of wonder, depending on what you’re trying to do. Then there’s Learn About, which feels like a slimmed-down version of NotebookLM that allows you to grasp any subject in a conversational manner, and you can upload your own PDFs. It’s great for anyone who wants to learn something.
But if you’re a student and have your own textbook to learn from, there’s now yet another AI learning tool that might be better suited for you, and Learn Your Way shares even more features with NotebookLM than Learn About.
Learn Your Way was developed with pedagogy experts to create a new way for students to learn instead of using the traditional textbook. There’s even a tech report you can read up on the AI-augmented textbook tool.
How is Learn Your Way different from Learn About?
An easy way to distinguish the main differences between Learn About and Learn Your Way is who the tools are for.
Learn About is something anyone can pick up and use to discover a particular subject in a conversational and interactive way. Learn Your Way is clearly aimed at students and has different functions. However, given all the crossover between these tools, anyone can use them.
How is Learn Your Way different from NotebookLM?
There are almost more similarities than differences between Learn Your Way and NotebookLM.
NotebookLM needs a source of information, and you can compile multiple sources to learn about a subject. From there, you can ask questions to the Gemini-powered chat, or have NotebookLM create a series of outputs, like audio or video overviews, reports, data tables, quizzes and more.
Learn Your Way can also do a lot of these things, but it’s intentionally limited. While NotebookLM is a powerful learning tool, there’s also a creative aspect to it that can be used for content creation and more. Learn Your Way breaks its abilities down to Immersive Text, Slides & Narration, Audio Lessons and Mindmaps — most of which can be done with NotebookLM. Learn Your Way is a bit more streamlined.
What does Learn Your Way do?
Learn Your Way will eventually allow you to upload your school textbooks and the tool will rework the content into a dynamic learning experience, but there’s currently a waitlist you need to sign up for to get the feature.
If you don’t have access to the upload feature and still want to try it out, you’re in luck. There are over 16 example lessons that you can choose from on a variety of topics like astronomy, computer science and sociology.
One distinct aspect of Learn Your Way is that it also asks you for a particular interest and will create examples based on that interest when going through the lesson.
For instance, when selecting The “Long-Haired” Comets in the series of examples, it will ask how you’d like the experience personalized. For this particular lesson, it gave the option of a high-schooler who likes music or an undergrad who likes film. Learn Your Way suggests that you can choose a particular interest for personalization, though I was unable to find where to do that and it may be limited to when you have the ability to upload your own documents.
Immersive Text is a reworking of your materials provided with personalization and the interest you selected. It also feels similar to how Learn About displays information, but there’s no conversational chat. It’ll provide images, highlight important information and provide a quiz on the lesson at the end.
Slides & Narration, Audio Lesson and Mindmaps within Learn Your Way feel nearly identical to NotebookLM. The Audio Lessons even have one of the same voices from NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews. And if you ever need to view the source you uploaded, there’s a prominent button for you to view it at any time.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
