Before the rise of GenAI, I often found myself more focused on taking notes than on reflecting, thinking critically, or engaging deeply with the new concepts being taught. GenAI has allowed me to study more efficiently through various channels that better match my preferred learning style.
The first tool that really stimulated a shift in learning modes is called NotebookLm. This allows you to transform any type of source into an AI generated podcast. I really like to use tool this for transforming the more technical texts containing lots of domain specific jargon. The tool will extract the most essential concepts, methods and conclusions and will transform it into a simple to follow podcast. When hearing about it, at first I was very skeptical, but through using it I was suprised by the degree of representation of real world voices and accurate intonations and accents. Also the manner in which the podcast sparked interest through a natural conversational flow really helped me to become more engaged with otherwise dry academic literature. One participant would pose questions to another, who was knowledgeable about the subject, in a natural and conversational manner similar to peer discussions outside the classroom. To make it more interactive I tried to answer the questions myself before the expert did, which actually allowed me to understand counterintuitive findings better on which I was wrong at first. The coolest thing is that even though the material is discussed in a more informal way it still mantained the quality and most important concepts of the article, even the nuances from the literature review (and yes I checked :P).
The second tool is more practical in nature and mostly used for efficiency gains. It is called otter.ai, here I upload videos and let it summarize the key findings. In the past I had to pause videos to take notes, now I let otter.ai do it while I watch the video in one go sparing me 50% of the video time. Wih the spared time I let it or chatgpt generate questions on the transcribed and summarized material. I then answer these questions while the AI gives feedback on my answers. This allowed me to shift from note taking based learning to a more interactive way of learning. I noticed by myself that I tend to retent material better when I formulate it in my own way and try to remember the material while I answer the questions rather than only reading the notes. I still read notes now but rahter as a recap or as memory tool while I answer the questions.
