How Gemini's Guided Learning can help you study more effectively
Earlier this year, I decided to learn Spanish. A complete beginner, I signed up for an in-person course, diligently did my homework and spent plenty of time with Gemini. When I wanted to know more about reflexive verbs, it gave me a thorough rundown. It explained errors in my responses, too, and generated helpful quizzes when prompted. Muy útil.
A few weeks ago, however, I tried a new Gemini mode that took my study to the next level. Instead of just answering my questions, “Guided Learning” asked me questions, too. It tailored its guidance to my level and, after explaining a concept, tested to check I got it. When we finished a topic, it provided a recap and suggested several things we could dive into next.
It was like having a personal tutor who never got bored of me. Fluency — or intermediacy, at least — here I come.
Guided Learning is an interactive study partner that helps you build a deeper understanding of any topic. Now available in the Gemini app, it can generate study guides from uploaded course material, walk you through debugging problematic code, or simply explain something, like how gravity works on the moon, with helpful videos and images. It can even do your homework with you. But it won’t do it for you.
In “Guided Learning” mode, Gemini can lay out a study plan for a topic before walking you through each step — always checking in to see if you’re picking things up along the way.
Since launch, people have also used Guided Learning to learn for school, work, and life — including everything from job interview prep to taking care of plants and studying for exams. The tool helps break down tasks into clear and manageable steps you can follow at your own pace.
“The idea is to help you learn, not just provide the answer,” says Nupur Jain, product manager for Guided Learning. “Ask it a complex math problem and it will guide you through the relevant concepts then work with you to get to the result. Because knowing how to arrive at an answer is more critical than the answer itself.”
The new mode is part of a suite of learning products and initiatives we’re launching as much of the world is now back to school. In Gemini, we’re introducing study guides, flashcards and enhancing quizzes with charts and graphs. In NotebookLM, our recently added features for students, including Flashcards, Quizzes, and new Audio Overviews capabilities offer learners new ways to engage with their materials.
We’ve also made Gemini Pro free to students all over the world for a year, starting in a selection of countries; investing $1 billion in U.S. education; and launching a Google AI for Education Accelerator to provide AI and job-ready skills to millions of U.S. university students.
“When used responsibly, AI is a powerful tool to unlock creativity, support learning and increase productivity,” says Ben Gomes, Chief Technologist of Learning & Sustainability. Ben leads a focus area composed of teams across the company who are advancing learning and education with AI. “We’re focused on building products that help people learn effectively and investing in ways that will bridge the gap between advanced AI tools and people’s ability to leverage them.”
Guided Learning builds on the success of last year’s Learning Coach Gem, which generated enthusiastic chatter from people online. “People were seeking a ‘buddy’ for conceptual understanding, not just answers,” Nupur says, “and they didn’t want to have to be prompt engineers to get it.”
Where Gemini in Deep Research Mode might show you the answer to a complex problem along with the calculations to get there, Guided Learning walks you through each step, making you do the work — and the learning.
Like the Learning Coach Gem, Guided Learning is powered by LearnLM, our family of models specifically fine-tuned for learning, which outperforms other models across key learning science principles like stimulating curiosity. To create a mode that guides rather than just informs, the team used sophisticated system instructions (SIs) to direct the model’s behavior — instructing it to ask you to clarify ambiguous prompts, for instance, and guide you to a homework answer rather than providing it directly.
Feedback from educators, pedagogical raters and student testers was critical. “We heard over and over that students wanted visuals to help them learn,” says Dave Messer, a product manager who co-led the project, “but quality had to be high to help students learn, just like a teacher choosing a helpful visual.” To that end, Guided Learning pulls from a database of high-quality diagrams and images and finds relevant videos on YouTube.
Feedback also helped shape the mode’s persona, which is designed to be a patient, friendly “study buddy” that uses natural language and even emoji to build rapport — because that’s the kind of learning partner students said would engage them. (I admit I felt encouraged when I was told one quiz answer was “perfecto!”)
Ben says our recent learning-focused launches— and the efforts leading up to them — represent the start of a long, company-wide journey. “Learning is deeply connected to Google’s mission,” he says. “The whole ecosystem of education is set for profound change and we plan to be as helpful a partner as possible.”
For Nupur, who has been using Guided Learning herself as she studies for her MBA, our latest announcements also represent something fundamental to education that can go overlooked: the joy. “We built Guided Learning to scale that ‘aha’ moment — that thing that amplifies the spark and joy of learning for everyone,” she says. “We can’t wait for users to go beyond answers to deepen their knowledge.”
