Listen up, students: my favorite study app just got a major update that made it a whole lot better

The long-running educational app Quizlet has been a cornerstone of my academic success since I was about fourteen, when I had to hand-make digital flashcards and probably took longer to learn than I did. I hadn’t thought about Quizlet since I graduated from college, but now that I’m back in graduate school, I thought I’d check out Old Faithful — and it looks like the learning app has gotten full AI support, and I’m shocked that it absolutely Love This!

The platform now offers many more study tools to help you get through your classes, including the use of generative AI to help you succeed in your classes. These tools include practice tests, study guides, “blasts,” and categories. With a few weeks left before I return to the classroom, I decided to try out each of these features and see how AI has improved Quizlet.

Back to the rhythm

One of my favorite features is practice tests because you can upload PDFs or even handwritten notes to Quizlet and the AI will generate personalized practice tests for you based on what you upload.

I like the idea of getting precise practice tests for the material you’re studying, rather than searching the internet for tests that may or may not cover everything you might need to learn. One of the problems I had with Quizlet back in the day was that you had to create or search for pre-made practice tests, and it was pretty rare to find a full test that covered a specific syllabus – so you had to skip or completely ignore irrelevant questions, which would affect your results.

I uploaded one of the syllabus data sheets I have for one of my classes and not only did it create a test for me, but it also gave me the ability to instantly create flashcards and a study guide that organized my 70-page document into concise, easy-to-understand notes. From what I can tell, despite the AI simplifying the content, nothing important was lost and I was able to expand on the information where needed.

Quizlet

(Photo Source: Muskaan Saxena via Future)

More to love

I absolutely love Quizlet without the AI, even if it can be a bit finicky to get the content that’s right for you and ready to digest. It’s one of the few places where someone as AI-skeptical as I am can actually say that it’s vastly improved the platform and will certainly improve the learning experience for many.

These generative AI features aren’t locked behind a paywall either, which is really shocking to me considering so many AI tools now require some kind of subscription or one-time payment. There’s the option to pay for more advanced AI features, like Q-chat, which uses generative AI in a chatbot-like way to act as an AI tutor to help you review your notes. You can try this feature for free, so I had it use some of my own content, as well as the study kits that are already available on the platform — and now I’m quite honestly willing to pay for it!

In the chat, you can choose a topic to discuss and then the AI will give you options. You can choose to “teach me,” “test me,” and “apply my knowledge,” or you can ask a specific question and get an answer.

Quizlet

(Photo Source: Muskaan Saxena via Future)

Keep in mind that these answers or quizzes are based entirely on the information you give Quizlet, so you probably won’t get the answers you get from chatbots like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. But that can be beneficial, since web bots have a worrying tendency to provide inaccurate or out-of-context information.

When I used the tutoring option, I found it to be quite realistic in a typical classroom setting. The AI tutor will give you a quick outline of the content and then ask you a few questions to keep you engaged and engaged, so you’re not just bombarded with walls of text. If you’re a little lost or confused, you can type in your question and the AI will answer it using examples from the study materials.

While I’m grateful for having access to the new, improved Quizlet right before I started my master’s degree, I wish I had something like this when I was studying virtually at uni during the pandemic. It would have made all those lonely hours spent at my desk so much more productive if I had something this interactive to help me study during quarantine.