Hey there,

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise when I say that the current AI ecosystem is seemingly flooded with AI tools that are little more than thin wrappers built onto a popular chatbot. This makes it much harder to find the truly great ones that exist out there. Today I wanted to explore one of the most promising AI education tools I’ve seen, Learn Your Way. This new experience allows you to learn from your documents by creating custom textbooks that include quizzes, lectures, and even AI generated presentations. 

What is ‘Learn Your Way’?

Learn Your Way (LYW) is a new experiment that's part of Google Labs which turns Gemini into your personal teacher and textbook provider. By uploading a PDF, the underlying Gemini model is able to make the information more engaging and accessible based on your interests and learning level. We’ll specifically look at three unique features: Immersive Text, Slides with Narration, and Audio Lessons. 

Immersive Text

The Immersive Text feature builds upon your initial source effectively turning it into a whole new resource that's customized to fit your background and knowledge level. This is mainly achieved by adding additional explanations based on your existing knowledge. For example, if you’re someone who loves football then LYW will try to use football terminology to help describe core concepts. It will also reword complex sections and even generate new visuals. 

While this is a great first step, Learn Your Way goes even further by giving you in-text comprehension questions to keep you engaged and ensure you’re reading to understand. The last feature within Immersive Text is the multiple choice quiz that is generated for each topic. These are grounded around the text and have a hint / explanation system built in. 

Slides and Narration

This is the most impressive feature of Learn Your Way. It generates an entire presentation with unique visuals and has custom narration throughout. Not only do these presentations look great, but they also sound natural. 

The Slides feature ensures that more visual learners can benefit from using this tool. 

Audio Lesson

As the name suggests, the Audio Lesson creates a podcast style video. These are great for having on in the background or while on the go. Each Audio lesson is roughly fifteen minutes and will cover your source in its entirety. This is different from the immersive text feature which breaks your source material into several key components. If you’ve ever used Audio Overviews in NotebookLM then you’re already familiar with these files.

How to Access?

There’s good news and bad news on this front. The good news is that this tool is free for everyone! The bad news is that there's currently a waitlist to get access. To get started learning with AI head to Learn Your Way’s experiment page in Google Labs and click “Waitlist” on the left. You’ll then need to answer a few questions and submit a Google form.

My Thoughts:

I’m thoroughly impressed with ‘Learn Your Way’. This Google Labs experiment is able to stand out in such a saturated ecosystem because of its clear, thoughtful, and deliberate purpose. Creating custom, tailored textbooks and learning experiences from dense sources is an excellent use of AI. Being able to learn about chemistry and molecular bonds by comparing it to your favorite book or hobby means that content will be significantly more engaging. For me, the AI-narrated presentations are the standout feature, transforming a dense document into an engaging, watchable lesson. 

This whole experiment feels like an ambitious reimagining of NotebookLM. While that Google experiment focuses on interacting with your uploaded sources, Learn Your Way takes this a step further by transforming those sources into a personalized curriculum. The team behind Learn Your Way even shared their reasoning and the relevant research that was used in creating this learning platform. 

The best way to judge this experiment is to explore it for yourself! Head over to Google Labs and sign up for Learn Your Way!