4 ways my favorite study app Quizlet just got even better (and it's still free)

Quizlet, a versatile learning platform that offers various study tools, was a constant in my studies from middle school through college. Now, the company is harnessing the rapid advancements of generative artificial intelligence to bring more innovative tools to students -- just in time for the upcoming school year. 

On Tuesday, Quizlet announced four new study tools that leverage generative AI to facilitate students' learning: Practice Tests, Study Guides, Blast, and Categories. These features address prior productivity roadblocks and highly requested help from students and teachers. 

Practice Tests

The Practice Tests feature takes your imported materials, including PDFs, documents, and handwritten notes, and generates personalized practice tests based on the content. It also provides instant feedback on your performance, with insights on areas for improvement.

This feature addresses the issue many students face when encountering a quality practice test: being limited to taking it once. Since Practice Tests generates many different tests, you can take as many practice tests as you want to get the most out of the experience.

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"Not only are we able to create that practice test, give you really relevant, perfect practice for the exam you're about to take in real life, but because of the underlying content that we have, we can create, effectively, an infinite number of practice tests," Meghann Lomas, Senior Director of Product Management at Quizlet, said in a statement. 

Study Guides

Quizlet's Study Guides feature transforms user-imported materials into an organized outline of the information, which students can use to review, learn, digest, and even convert into other study tools.

"Whatever course materials you have, we can ingest them -- like PDF, DocX, copy and paste -- and then in the process, what we will output is a study guide, which will be more like organized notes or an outline of the content that you have uploaded; a set so that you can then use that in Learn or Flashcards; and then ultimately a practice test as well," Lomas said.

This ability to upload your content addresses one of my biggest pain points on the platform -- manually entering every term and definition into Quizlet -- which took hours of my precious study time.

Blast and Categories

Quizlet has also added features to help teachers, including Blast and Categories, which help them create more engaging classroom content.

Blast is a gamified learning tool that lets students participate in asteroid-blasting sessions, matching terms to definitions from study sets. Categories is a Jeopardy-style game in which the whole class can participate in a quiz show in the classroom. Like the rest of the features, teachers can upload their content and have Quizlet convert it into these formats automatically.

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In middle and high school, my teachers would encourage the class to memorize the material for an exam by holding in-class Jeopardy games with test content a day before. It was a fun experience; however, it didn't happen as often as we'd like, because it took teachers so long to manually create the boards. This feature seems like something both my teachers and classmates could have benefitted from.

The AI of it all

Quizlet isn't new to AI; some of its longest-standing features, such as Learn, introduced in 2017, are powered by AI. 

Despite being a major part of the platform, AI isn't overly advertised on the Quizlet site or mentioned once in the press release with this announcement. That is all purposefully done -- Lomas shares that the company views AI as a means to bring users an experience they envision, but not as Quizlet's main focus.

"Rather than being like, 'Let's build an AI product and see how it serves students,' we're like, 'How can we serve students? Can AI help us here? Yes, quite a bit,'" said Lomas. "And so that's how we've built it." 

Availability

All of Quizlet's new features are accessible today for users 16 years old or older in the US and are free with a usage limit. Power users who need unlimited access can subscribe to Quizlet Plus for $36 per year.