While AI tools are incredibly divisive, and I remain highly skeptical of them in general (especially as someone who makes a living writing for the internet), I have to give props to Google’s NotebookLM, which is the rare AI tool I’ve found that meets my standards for being both ethical and useful.
This large language model pulls only from the content you put into it, making it a great way to organize your notes, pull out key ideas, and increase your productivity. And now a new update allows you to use it to create flashcards and quizzes, making it a perfect study companion—and it’s still free.
What NotebookLM can do
If you’re unfamiliar with NotebookLM’s capabilities, here’s a quick rundown: You start by uploading your materials to “notebooks,” which you can think of as your single source of truth on a given topic. (An SSOT is a repository where you keep all the information, resources, and materials related to whatever it is you’re doing.) You can upload local files, files from your Google Drive, links to websites or YouTube videos, or plain old copied-and-pasted text. This is particularly useful for students, as you can input links to articles mentioned in your study materials, upload PDFs from your teacher, or even add digital copies of your textbook, putting all your approved study materials in one place.
You can then ask the chatbot questions about the material, ask it to create an audio “podcast” of people discussing the content (which you can then interact with), and more. I most often use it when I’m working on a large project: I input all the interviews I’ve done, all the research material I have, and any other related elements, then ask it to help me find quotes or develop an outline. It’s also great for summarizing and organizing my notes and class materials when I’m preparing for a grad school exam.
And with the latest update, you have more options: Along the side menu, you’ll see buttons for Flashcards and Quizzes alongside Mind maps and Audio overview.
Testing NotebookLM’s new features
To test these new capabilities, I chose from my collection of notebooks one filled with materials for a certification exam I’ve been studying for.
Instant quizzes
NotebookLM previously allowed you to ask it to create quizzes, but it would just generate practice quizzes in plain text with an answer key at the end. The new Quizzes feature is a lot more involved.
Credit: Google/Lindsey Ellefson
The quiz it generated from seven PDFs of material was extremely detailed and easy to use. It asked a question, gave me four options, and, after I clicked one, told me if it was right or wrong, and included an explanation for why the right answer was correct. All of the information was pulled directly from my own materials, so I didn’t have to worry about checking the sourcing.
What do you think so far?
Effortless flashcards
There are a ton of flashcard apps out there and I’ve reviewed plenty, but I never stuck with any of them because creating flashcards is invariably tedious—or expensive. In contrast, the flashcards NotebookLM generates were easy to use and, again, pulled right from my materials.
There isn’t much to say about them—they’re flashcards; you just flip them back and forth to reveal questions and answers—but notably, and unlike other flashcard apps, NotebookLM doesn’t have a way to indicate whether you got a card’s answer right or wrong. Some other apps will ask you to indicate how you did so they know how often to show you that card again, in line with the Leitner method of flashcard review. That doesn’t mean this approach to flashcards is terrible, however, as it adds some additional worthwhile features. For instance, once you flip a card by clicking on it to reveal the answer, NotebookLM adds an Explain button. Click it to get more context on the answer, or to see exactly where from your uploaded materials the card was generated.
NotebookLM is one of my favorite study apps
I’ve written about all kinds of learning techniques and studying apps, and used most of them myself, whether for work, grad school, or my own personal development. I am squeamish about most AI tools not only because they can be inaccurate, but because they provide so many shortcuts that it’s harder to learn and retain information. NotebookLM, meanwhile, makes it easy to study using proven methods, and as it only pulls information from resources you provide (and therefor presumably trust), you’ll be able to trust its output.
The addition of the quizzes and flashcards make it an even more powerful and useful study tool than it already was, and that’s saying a lot. I’m going to use both of them to prepare for my next exam exam.
