NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook)

ChatGPT and Gemini answer from everything they have ever seen. NotebookLM answers from what you upload: your lecture slides, the assigned readings, your own notes. Every answer carries an inline citation you can click to jump to the exact sentence in the source.

That single design choice removes the biggest study risk: an answer that sounds right but belongs to a different syllabus. If it is not in your sources, NotebookLM will tell you it cannot find it.

1. 1

   Create a notebook named after the course code

   e.g. 'BIO2043 Cell Biology'. Keeping subjects separate stops answers from bleeding across modules.

2. 2

   Upload the spine first

   Syllabus, module outline and assessment brief. These give the model the shape of your course before any content.

3. 3

   Add lecture material weekly

   Slides, recording transcripts and your own typed notes. Five minutes each week beats a panic upload in exam period.

4. 4

   Write a note titled 'What I don't understand'

   Keep adding confusions to it. It becomes a source, so you can ask the notebook to teach exactly your gaps.

5. 5

   Use source selection deliberately

   Untick everything except this week's lecture when you want focused revision. Selected sources define the answer space.

NotebookLM is not just for text. With the right custom prompt, you can ask it to turn a chapter, lecture or set of readings into a slide outline, an infographic brief or a presentation script. The trick is to be specific about format, audience and length.

1. 1

   Pick the sources you want to visualise

   Select only the lecture or reading you are turning into slides. Too many sources makes the output noisy.

2. 2

   Ask for a structured slide outline

   Request titles, bullet points, a suggested image for each slide and speaker notes. Tell it how many slides you need.

3. 3

   Push for infographics when useful

   Ask for comparison tables, timelines, flowcharts or step diagrams in markdown or plain text so you can paste them into a design tool.

4. 4

   Polish in Canva with Magic Layer

   Copy the outline into Canva, pick a presentation template, then use Magic Layer to auto-adjust spacing, fonts and image placement.

Using only the selected source, create a 10-slide presentation outline for a class of [year/level] students.
For each slide give: (1) a title, (2) 3 bullet points max, (3) one suggested visual or diagram, (4) one sentence of speaker notes.
Make the first slide an introduction, the last slide a summary, and include one slide for common misconceptions.

Turn the selected source into an infographic brief. Give me: a headline, 5 key statistics or facts with exact quotes, a colour mood, and a layout suggestion (e.g. timeline, comparison, process flow).
Keep all claims grounded in the source and add the citations.

Upload this week's material, generate a Study Guide, run the "quiz me" prompt for ten minutes, then add every question you got wrong to your "What I don't understand" note. Do this weekly and your exam revision becomes review, not discovery.