How to study with AI for for better grades in less time

When it comes to AI in education, the ways it can help cheating are often what first come to mind. But its uses for actually making us far better and faster learners are exponential.  

Here are some of the ways I and other students are applying to their studying. I have so many friends that have been able to cut their study time in half, while actually sticking with consistent study habits and getting better grades than ever. Let's level up our study skills beyond re reading texts and slides last minute.

Here's an overview of the ai study strategies and ai tools I'll share about to get you going:

• Flashcards

• Practice quizzes

• Tutoring

• Case scenarios

• Feedback

• Study groups

• Time management

Flashcards

Flashcards are a funny thing because you probably learned about them in elementary school and thought they were the most basic way to study and surely as you get older there will be more advanced tactics. But no, it turns out flashcards are pretty great. A cue on one side that primes you to have to recall something yourself, and then the answer to check with on the back.

Anki is the go to spaced-repetition flashcard tool for many students. It doesn’t use any AI itself, but there are tools and add-ons you can use to make your Anki cards for you.

This removes the most time consuming part about flashcards (aka making them), and leaves the most effective part of it (actually answering the questions) for you.

There are also tools like Wisdolia which re-imagine the flashcard concept and enhance learning. Just add in your lecture slides, class notes, or course material and it will make flashcards for you organized by the key points you need to learn, so you don't have to spend hours, and they will give you feedback as you answer questions. And if you want to use it in combination with Anki, you can easily export your cards. The goal is to help you retain information faster than ever.

Practice quizzes

Flashcards are cool and all, but multiple choice is where it’s at. Sure, it may not be the most in-depth test of your knowledge, but it’s a great way to cover a lot of information fast and to build up some momentum with your studies. ChatGPT can make you multiple choice questions, but Wisdolia will give you loads quickly in an easy to use interface.

Tutoring

Tutors are awesome because they morph around your specific needs and when you get stuck, they keep helping you until you figure it out. 

But, it’s hard to give every student a tutor, and quite expensive too.

AI tools like Synthesis Tutor are starting to solve this for kids 7-11, as well as Khan Academy’s new Khanmigo tool. This is surely a space that will see a lot of innovation over the next few years.

Additionally, it's important to cultivate strong research and citation skills to avoid unintentional plagiarism.

Case scenarios

As your knowledge progresses you want to keep challenging yourself more and more. You never know exactly what you will see on your exam, so the deeper you understand something, the better of you will be.

Going beyond definitions and applying your knowledge to stories with case scenarios is a great way to test this. Usually these type of practice questions are super hard to find. And if you do find them, they are always just slightly off topic from what you need.

AI is great at taking concepts and turning them into stories. You can do this super easily on Wisdolia. All you do is upload your notes or lecture slides, and case questions will be automatically created for you. 

Feedback

Active recall + spaced repetition is great. But… the speed at which you build and retain knowledge will be super limited if you just do active recall over and over again, each time learning if you got the answer right or wrong.

If you don’t learn why your answer was wrong, then it will be much harder to get the right answer to stick in your mind. Getting this feedback could take you from needing to answer a wrong question 4 times before understanding it, vs just 2 times. Multiplied across hundreds of practice questions this makes a huge difference.

On Wisdolia you can get this kind of feedback as you answer the questions. It will even point out partially incorrect answers, noting what part of the answer was right and which part was wrong.

Asking questions while reading

A great reading or consumption practice for many people is to come up with questions as you are reading. This is a helpful forcing function to make sure you are really paying attention to the details, instead of simply reading while daydreaming. Ask questions like, ‘Why is this like that?’ or ‘How does this connect to that other thing we learned earlier?’

Learning researcher Andy Matuschak shows how to do this at an Olympic level of skill

After you think of the questions, you should first try to reason through it and guess what an answer might be yourself. Then, you can go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask the AI the question. This type of questions are usually quite annoying to search on Google because you just end up with a bunch of blogs or presentations that you have to dig through to find the answer.

If you want to talk directly with the document that you are reading or watching, then tools like ChatPDF are awesome. Or if you already are using Wisdolia to generate your flashcards and practice questions, then you can also talk to the document there.

Use AI in a study group for a bigger brain and more fun studying

Studying with friends can lead to way fun study sessions than only doing your own learning.

One perk of it is that each of you likely has different strengths and weaknesses making it easy to help each other out where it matters most.

Try uploading your study guide to ChatGPT and asking it to give you a topic to speak on. Then, get up and speak on that topic to the group. Afterwards, the others should add in any key insights or context that was missed and offer any corrections.

Here is a prompt that has worked well for me and my friends:
"Below is a study guide. I am studying with a study group of # friends and we want to test our knowledge. Give me a key topic to talk about. When I say 'next', please provide the next topic for us to speak on"

AI scheduling for better time management

This artificial intelligence tool called Motion has been super great for automating my schedule and setting up time blocks for me to study for each upcoming exam.

I find that I'll often do a lot to optimize my actual studying while forgetting that time management and actually doing the studying is sometimes 90% of what matters.

Conclusion

Hope these study tips have been helpful! If all else fails, just return to the non-AI basics to get your study sessions on track:

• Background noise is bad for focus. Study in a quiet space or use white noise and noise cancelling headphones.

• Try to spend most of your time doing active recall, not passive consumption

• Have a consistent study schedule. Even the best study plan and strategy will be a struggle if you start the day before the exam