If you’re a high school or college student or have one in the house, you probably know all about Quizlet.
For the uninitiated, the app (with 60 million monthly users) helps students study and prepare for tests. In the olden, analog days there were notes and flash cards – now students use apps like Quizlet to augment their schedules and learning sessions. It works by making the raw materials interactive, reinventing them into more interactive areas with leaderboards and streaks – essentially gamifying the process.
Now Quizlet has just introduced a new version that accelerates learning by incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning to figure out where a student is strong versus where they need more work.
While I’m not a regular Quizlet user, this all makes sense to me. I am working on a three year streak of using DuoLingo to learn Italian and French.
That app uses many of these same techniques that entice me to learn new phrases to tailor content and encourage people to study with friends and family. As skeptical as I can be about the gamification of everything, it has actually worked, and is often fun. I expect Quizlet to be equally successful, especially as it now allows people to study together, rather than forcing them to all compete solo on leaderboards.
Study can sometimes work best in collaboration with others, so with the new AI capabilities, that means student groups can attempt challenges, allowing group strength to come through.
There has obviously been a lot of chatter about AI helping students to cheat. This is a great example of how AI can actually help students learn better. It’s probably a stretch to say that this new version of Quizlet will suddenly make studying fun, but it should make it more productive.
