Flashcards, quizzes, mind maps and study guides are buttons now — not prompts. Most students never open the panel they're hiding in. Here's what each one does and how to steer it.
They're different tools and the difference is the whole point. Use both.
Rule of thumb: if getting it wrong would cost you marks, it belongs in NotebookLM. Quizzes, source checks, anything with a page number. Everything else, Claude.
Open a notebook, look right. Every one of these is one click on your own uploaded material. Green means no prompt needed; blue means it's worth steering.
Multiple choice from your sources, with an explanation for every answer you get wrong — cited back to the page it came from.
Hit Quiz in Studio. Set topic, difficulty and question count. After each set you get a topic summary showing what you're weak on, plus a regenerate button that drills exactly those. That loop is the single most valuable free study feature shipped in 2026.
Got one wrong? Hit Explain — it breaks down why, with citations.
Generate a quiz on the topics my last set flagged as needing more practice. HARD difficulty, 15 questions, application over recall. After I finish, give me a topic summary comparing this round to the last one — which gaps I closed, which are still open, and what to drill next.
A deck from your notes in seconds. Saves your progress, shuffles, lets you delete the ones you already know.
This replaces the Claude-to-CSV-to-Anki route for most people. Cards are grounded in your sources, and every card has an Explain button that expands it into a full breakdown with citations.
You can share a deck with a classmate by link. Splitting a unit four ways and swapping decks is the highest-leverage thing a study group can do in ten minutes.
Make 40 flashcards from these sources. One idea per card. No card should be answerable by guessing from its own wording. Prioritize the terms and mechanisms most likely to appear on an exam, and skip anything purely administrative.
Still use Anki if you want true spaced repetition across a whole semester. NotebookLM tracks progress within a deck; Anki schedules reviews across months.
A structured study guide from your sources — key concepts, definitions, and short-answer questions to test yourself with.
The default is good. Steering it at your actual exam format is better.
Build a study guide for my [course] exam on [date], covering [units]. Structure it as: key concepts with one-line definitions, then the 10 questions most likely to be tested, then a "commonly confused" section pairing terms students mix up. Only use my uploaded sources. If a topic I named isn't in them, say so instead of filling it in.
A visual map of how everything in your notebook connects. Clickable — each node expands into the source it came from.
Generate it, look at it once, then close it and redraw it from memory on paper. The redraw is the studying. Looking at someone else's map — even one built from your notes — is the low-utility version.
Best use: after you think you've finished a unit. The branches you can't reproduce are the ones you haven't learned.
Two AI hosts discussing your course materials. Download it and listen on the walk to class.
Use the Customize box before you generate. Ungoverned, it spends equal time on everything — including the parts you already know.
Focus on [hardest concept] and spend most of the episode there. My exam covers [units]; skip anything outside that. Define every term the first time you use it. I'm listening while walking with no notes and no screen, so don't reference anything visual. Use only my uploaded sources.
There are other formats too — debate and critique styles land differently than the default two-host chat, and a debate format is genuinely useful for essay subjects.
A narrated, animated walkthrough of your material. The visual version of the podcast.
Better than Audio Overview for anything with structure you need to see — a cycle, a process, a proof, an anatomy diagram. Worse for anything you'd listen to while doing something else.
Pick one: if the concept has a shape, use video. If it's an argument or a narrative, use audio.
A structured written document from your sources — briefing, summary, timeline, or a format you specify.
Where this earns its place: reading eight papers before you commit to citing any of them. Not for generating anything you'd hand in.
For each source I uploaded: its central claim in one sentence, the evidence behind it, and its main limitation. Then a table of every place these sources contradict each other, with page citations both ways. If a claim isn't in the files, say so rather than supplying it.
Pulls structured numbers out of your sources into a table, or renders the shape of an argument as a graphic.
Narrow but excellent for lab reports, econ, and anything where the data is scattered across a dozen pages of prose. It won't invent a figure that isn't there — which is exactly why you'd use it over Claude for this.
Twenty minutes once, then fifteen minutes a day. Everything here is free.
That loop is retrieval, spacing, and feedback in one place — the three things the research says actually work.
Nothing here changes it.
Everything on this page is a study aid — it quizzes you, tests you, and shows you what you don't know. None of it produces work you'd hand in, and a Report is for reading sources properly, never for drafting an assignment from them.
Same two questions settle it. Could you tell your professor exactly what you did? If every AI tool vanished tomorrow, would you still know this material?
Upload one class into a notebook and hit Quiz before you revise anything.
Ten minutes, and you'll know exactly where you actually stand.