Guided Learning in Gemini: From answers to understanding

Every day, people around the world come to Google to learn something new. Whether it’s watching a YouTube video on graphic design or asking Gemini to help create a custom study guide, our products have always aimed to help. We believe technology can be a powerful tool for learning, but we also know that true understanding goes deeper than a single answer.

Insights from learning science show that people learn best when they actively engage with information. This principle is at the heart of our work. In close partnership with educators, students, and pedagogical experts, we developed LearnLM, a family of models fine-tuned for learning and grounded in educational research. Today, with those capabilities infused in Gemini, we’re introducing Guided Learning—a new experience designed to act as a personal learning companion.

Going beyond the answer with Guided Learning

Guided Learning encourages participation through probing and open-ended questions that spark a discussion and provide an opportunity to dive deeper into a subject. The aim is to help you build a deep understanding instead of just getting answers. Guided Learning breaks down problems step-by-step and adapts explanations to your needs — all to help you build knowledge and skills.

Guided Learning provides rich, multimodal responses — including images, diagrams, videos and interactive quizzes — that can help you build and test your knowledge by focusing on the process, not just the answer.

Whether you’re preparing for an exam about enzymes, starting the first draft of a paper on the importance of bee populations in supporting our food systems, or exploring your passion for photography, Guided Learning is a collaborative thinking partner that helps you get it — each step of the way.

Built in partnership with experts and learners

Guided Learning is informed by years of research and partnership with educators, pedagogical experts and students. We began by asking a fundamental question: how could AI support learning responsibly? In 2022, we established a cross-disciplinary team of AI experts, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. Working closely with external learning experts, we found that simply improving prompting wasn’t enough to create a meaningful learning tool.

This insight led to the creation of LearnLM, so we could infuse learning science into our foundational models. Earlier this year, we brought those capabilities into Gemini 2.5, making it the world’s leading model for learning. This enables Guided Learning to meet learners where they are and help them get where they want to go.

Learners told us that they want to be able to go from quick answers to deep understanding, but don't always know how to. They also valued having a safe place to ask any question they might have. We designed Guided Learning to help with this by creating a conversational, judgment-free space for anyone to explore topics in an enjoyable way at their own pace, putting the power of a great learning experience in their own hands.

We worked with educators to design Guided Learning to be a partner in their teaching, built on the core principle that real learning is an active, constructive process. It encourages students to move beyond answers and develop their own thinking by guiding them with questions that foster critical thought. To make it simple to bring this approach into their classrooms, we created a dedicated link that educators can post directly in Google Classroom or share with students.

Guided Learning represents an important step in our path to helping everyone in the world learn anything in the world. We also recognize that the path forward is one of immense possibility and shared responsibility to ensure AI truly benefits all learners. We look forward to continued partnership, research and feedback to help make Guided Learning as helpful as possible for learners everywhere.

Try out Guided Learning in the Gemini app.