Google "Learn About" - Democratizing Self-Learning?

Nov 14, 2024

Google’s new Learn About tool is a major step towards democratizing self-directed learning with generative AI (GAI). Learn About uses GAI to create an interactive textbook of sorts on a topic of interest. To get started, just enter a topic. I tried “How is generative AI affecting higher education?”

Learn About does its thing and creates interactive learning resources based on the topic. As the name implies, the Interactive List is interactive, but not in the way I expected. I thought clicking on one of the areas would take me to a website, but instead Learn About enters a new prompt based on the element you clicked. Here’s what happened when I clicked on Teaching and Learning.

Learn About creates a new interactive list. You can click on one of these topics to drill down further. You can enter your own prompt as well, resulting in a new Interactive List.

This is awesome for curious, self-directed learners. Maybe it’s just me, but I love this sort of ad-hoc, meandering learning. When I was a kid, I spent hours just randomly reading the encyclopedia. I’d start off researching something for a school project, then get distracted by other cool stuff. Inefficient? Sure, but I learned a lot following those twisty paths. Learn About has the same feel to it.

Learn About is different

You might be thinking, "Can't you do all of this with other AI tools?" Yes, while technically possible, creating similar learning resources with other AI chatbots requires significant time and expertise, resources that are in short supply for many of us. Learn About's innovation is making topic exploration effortless for anyone. That's what makes it special.

Try duplicating Learn About’s results in ChatGPT. With its new search feature, if you’re good at prompting, you can probably get there, but it will take significant effort. If you can’t prompt well, then you’re out of luck. Each new subtopic requires a new, carefully constructed prompt. Learn About handles this complexity behind the scenes. It just works. The visual, clickable interface is a bonus. You can simply follow your curiosity without the friction of planning and prompting.

Democratizing self-learning

Learn About and similar tools can make virtually anyone a lifelong, self-directed learner. GAI holds tremendous promise for making it easier to learn on your own. Higher ed preaches the importance of self-directed and lifelong learning, but learning on your own has never been easy. Yes, there are limitless resources available to anyone with Internet access but that’s part of the problem.

Back in the day, I just had the encyclopedia unless I could get to the library. That was limiting, but it was also simple. Want to know something? Grab World Book (we couldn’t afford Britannica) and start reading or catch a ride to the library and hit the card catalog. Today, we have to wade through endless web searches, YouTube videos and the like. It’s often overwhelming. The tyranny of choice is real. It’s well established that having too many choices can paralyze decision making. Put this on top of information overload, and the vastness of the Internet can hinder self-directed learning.

GAI helps with this, especially tools like Perplexity.ai. But you still have to know what you’re doing and you have to have time to refine your prompts. Learn About makes that SO much easier. It hits the sweet spot between the ease of the past and the vast resources of the present. As a result, lifelong self-directed learning is available to virtually anyone with web access. That’s a huge step forward.

Implications for higher ed

Learn About could help address one of higher education's most pressing challenges: declining student agency. Since COVID, I've observed an alarming trend across higher education, one that many colleagues have confirmed - students increasingly act as passive recipients rather than active participants in their learning. Office hours are ghost towns, and too many students seem to have forgotten they can direct their own education. This evidence (and I’m hesitant to call it evidence), is anecdotal, but I’ve talked to many professors and they universally have similar observations.

Tools like Learn About offer hope. By making self-directed learning more accessible and engaging, we can help students rediscover their capacity to direct their own learning. The stakes are high - in an increasingly complex world, students who can't exercise learning agency face serious challenges. Learn About isn't just another ed tech tool - it's a potential catalyst for rebuilding student autonomy.

Caveats

Currently, there are some downsides to Learn About. It’s subject to all of the normal GAI problems with bias, hallucinations, and the like. But there’s another huge drawback — you can’t save or return to Learn About sessions. All you can do is save the session to an HTML file, which is OK but doesn’t let you refine the output. In other words, once you leave the Learn About page or start a new chat session, the current session is gone forever. Google will probably address this weakness (I hope). Otherwise, they are limiting a promising educational tool.

Google also has a well-earned reputation for killing projects. The desert of dead Google projects is vast and bleak. Given the interest in GAI and education, I don’t see Learn About being sent to the Google graveyard anytime soon, but with Google you can never tell. While it’s available, I’m going to use it.

What to do now

Officially, there’s a wait-list for Learn About, but if you have a Google account, you can probably get access. If you can, start playing with it to see how you might be able to introduce it to students. Maybe you can plant a seed of learning agency in some of them to the great benefit of their future selves.

If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them below, or email me - craig@AIGoesToCollege.com. I’d love to hear from you. Be sure to check out the AI Goes to College podcast, which I co-host with Dr. Robert E. Crossler. It’s available at https://www.aigoestocollege.com/follow.
Thanks for reading!