- OpenAI has added Study mode to ChatGPT, even for free accounts
- The new mode makes ChatGPT act more like a tutor
- You can even get it to test your knowledge
If you’ve got kids who are at school, and you’re anything like me, you’ll find that you end up helping them with their homework after school an awful lot. While this has helped me brush up on my math, history, and geography, it’s also a massive time suck, especially when you’re tired after work.
And, to be honest, I sometimes feel like I am actually doing their homework, not just helping them with it.
The latest addition to ChatGPT’s repertoire, however, has come to the rescue, just in time for the new term to start in September.
Back to school
ChatGPT’s new Study Mode is a way of making ChatGPT act more like a tutor and less like an answer factory.
So, instead of simply giving you the answer to a homework question, it will take you through its reasoning in stages, asking you questions as it goes, so you are more engaged with the answer and, perhaps, you’ll learn something along the way.
Study mode has already started to roll out to logged-in ChatGPT users on Free, Plus, Pro, and Team subscriptions, with availability in ChatGPT Edu coming in the next few weeks.
Using Study mode
If you look in the Tools menu below where you normally write your prompt into ChatGPT, you should see a new ‘Study and learn’ option. Click this and it highlights the option in blue, indicating it has been selected.
Now, when you start typing in your prompt a new menu will appear offering you choices between ‘Help me with my homework’, ‘Explain a topic to me’ and ‘Create a practice quiz’.
Clicking ‘Explain a topic to me’, I found it fairly easy to let ChatGPT narrow down the subject I was interested in to explaining Ohm’s Law, and it delivered a nicely concise lecture on what Ohm’s Law was, and its place in understanding the electric circuit.
What’s nice is that it tests you as it goes. It explains something, then asks you to explain it back to it so that it can check your understanding.
If I asked ChatGPT to ‘Help me with my homework’ it takes a similarly interactive approach to learning. For example, when I asked it to explain Hitler’s rise to power in 1930s Germany, it started by asking me what I already knew about Germany after World War 1, and the conversation naturally evolved from there. This way, ChatGPT feels much more like it’s tutoring me, not just giving me an answer.
Back in my day
When you’ve done a bit of studying with ChatGPT Study mode, you might want to choose the option to create a quiz. I asked it to create a quiz on 9th grade math covering the subject of ratio, and it came up with five questions for me to answer. If an answer I gave was halfway to being correct, but not quite there, it gently coaxed me into getting there by giving me clues.
ChatGPT is already one of the most used study tools by kids, but the new Study mode just gives people that extra reason to use it. When you engage with study mode, you’re met with questions that guide and help, and that are pitched to the correct skill level to help you build a deeper understanding.
I mean, if we’d had tools like this when I was in school, I’m pretty sure I’d have done better in my exams. It really is like having a private tutor on your laptop, and it makes studying for an exam engaging and fun.
Here’s to learning a subject properly, not just finishing something.
