Introduction
Oxford University teaches its students how to use AI so they can learn more effectively and efficiently. Today, I'm going to show you how they do that.
Hello, I'm Giles. I make videos about the science of learning and learning science. If that sounds interesting to you, then subscribe—it'd be great to have you with us.
AI has the potential to transform and accelerate your learning. It could become a talented tutor for you, and that's not just my opinion. Research has shown that AI enhances academic performance and study efficiency. But there is a high chance that you're not using it properly. Well, after watching this, you will be. You'll become a machine-enhanced, fast, and efficient learner.
The Problem
AI is good at doing things we ask it to do—writing reports, summarizing papers. It's useful. But the more we ask it to do for us, the less we end up doing for ourselves. That’s no good because it’s in the doing that we learn.
You wouldn’t get a personal trainer to run around a track for you and expect to get any benefit. Instead, use AI as a trainer—get it to challenge and guide you. How? That’s coming up.
But before you start using AI in this way, you have to remember that it can get things wrong. Always be critical in your evaluation of its output. AI hallucinations—like renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America"—are real.
First, you have to think about how we actually learn.
How We Learn
I know I talk about this a lot, and you might be sick of hearing it, but study after study has shown that retrieval practice is the most effective form of learning.
You can’t make yourself remember something just by trying. But you do remember by interacting with the information you want to learn, which also helps with understanding.
So however you use AI, you have to make sure you utilize that. Getting AI to force you to think about something, ask you lots of questions, and test you is a much better strategy. It aligns with how our brains like to learn—just like a tutor.
M. Ean Mik, an AI researcher, discusses this in his Substack. If you want to learn more about AI, how to use it properly, and prompt engineering, I highly recommend his work. He didn't provide the URL, but I'll add it to the description.
How to Prompt ChatGPT
You have to prompt ChatGPT to test you.
How might you do that? Well, there are many approaches, but let’s start with Socratic questioning.
This is something I’ve discussed before, and it’s a fantastic way to identify weaknesses in your understanding. Here’s an example:
"Act as a Socratic tutor and help me understand the concept of momentum in physics. Ask me questions to guide my understanding."
ChatGPT will then generate questions like:
"What do you think momentum might mean in a physical sense? Can you describe it in your own words?"
You provide your answer, and ChatGPT assesses your understanding and gives feedback. This method moves you away from rote learning and encourages deeper thinking about concepts—just like a tutor would.
This is actually the style of an Oxford admissions interview. They ask questions they don’t expect you to know the answers to, guiding you toward an answer instead. The reason? They want to see how you think about something—to find out if you have intellectual curiosity and can work through a problem rather than just recalling pre-learned answers.
Creating Practice Questions
Ask ChatGPT to provide multi-level explanations for you.
For example, you can prompt it to explain a concept as if to:
- A child
- A high school student
- An academic
Then, you try writing your own explanations at these levels and ask ChatGPT to assess how well you did.
You can also ask it to generate practice questions at different levels, use analogies, or provide real-life examples to help grasp concepts. Then, you do the same—write your own explanations and have ChatGPT evaluate them.
The key is to always get ChatGPT to challenge you. Keep in mind Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning:
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create
You could even ask ChatGPT to create a set of challenges aligned with these levels. It’s like having a personal trainer for your brain.
This approach is why Oxford still uses the tutorial system—it forces you to think.
Another benefit of learning with AI? There’s no embarrassment.
If you're in a classroom and don't understand something, you might be hesitant to ask. But with AI, you can ask as many times as you need until you fully grasp the concept.
Reading with AI
Be careful with this one.
If you just ask AI to summarize a paper for you, it might do a decent job—but it can also leave things out. And if you don’t know what’s missing, you won’t develop the necessary reading skills.
A better method:
- First, you summarize the paper and pull out the key concepts.
- Then, ask ChatGPT to do the same.
- Compare your summary with its output and identify any differences.
Another useful approach is to ask AI to list the key concepts needed to fully understand the paper before reading it.
Here’s an example:
I took an article and asked ChatGPT:
"Give me a list of 20 key terms in this paper and break them into five categories."
This helps identify terms I need to research further.
You can also ask AI to extract key propositions from a text in a structured way, like:
- X is a type of Y
- W is caused by X
- A explains B
Then, ask it to generate a table with three columns organizing these relationships.
This provides a solid summary of all the concepts you need to understand to properly read and engage with the material.
Final Thoughts
These strategies, which I’ve recently started using myself, come from the University of Oxford’s website.
Oxford suggests that its students use AI not to do the work for them, but to enhance their learning—like a personal tutor who’s a little unreliable but generally very helpful.
Everything I’ve referenced in this video is linked in the description, along with an additional paper recommended by the University of Cambridge’s Library Department. It introduces the CLEAR principle for using AI effectively.
Once you’ve gone through these resources, you’ll be in a great position to transform your learning using AI. You’ll be using AI as a learning tool far more effectively than most people—and it’s definitely worth your while.