So, I've been talking to ChatGPT

Student shares a story of how ChatGPT’s voice mode helped them learn faster.

Two weeks ago, I interviewed Sammy, a university student who shared an experience about using CHATGPT to prepare for a final exam. His story is, I believe, a sign of times to come, an insight into how students are finding new ways to use AI to help them learn.

Facing a time crunch before an important exam, Sammy used ChatGPT to create an efficient study session during what would otherwise have been unproductive commute time.

"Today I had a final exam for one of my classes and I had a busy week. So, I didn't have a lot of time to prepare as much as I wanted to for the exam" Sammy explained.

"I fed it all the study material that I needed to know for the exam. I utilized its voice chat to basically be my own private tutor while I am traveling to Eindhoven. I had an hour drive this morning to go to school. Usually during that hour, I'm just listening to music so it's not very productive study wise, but this time I turned on the voice feature for ChatGPT."

The process involved uploading study notes, slides, and practice exam questions. Sammy then instructed the AI to create both multiple-choice and open-ended questions based on the material, simulating a real exam environment while he drove. After answering each question verbally, the AI would provide explanations regardless of whether his answers were correct or not.

Sammy found value in this explanation phase: "It would still give me the explanation of why my question is right, which was the part that really helped me."

"It's a 1-hour time span of studying into something that would probably take me more than 2 days... it retained the same information, just because it felt like my own personal tutor. I told it to grade my response from one to a hundred and some of them I get like 60, some of them might get 70... so it was also able to gauge how detailed I was for each one. And then you can keep building on top of that, because once it had the memory of the questions I was getting 60s and 70s on, compared to the 90s, I told it to create questions based on what I've been getting wrong instead of stuff I've been getting right."

Note: Sammy noted that the AI would sometimes speak too quickly and wouldn't consistently remember his request to slow down. Finally, he found open-ended questions particularly beneficial for deeper learning:

"When you're answering an open-ended question, it forces you to critically think a lot more than a multiple-choice question would... I retained the knowledge better that way. So even in the future, if I were to use this method of studying again even if it was for a multiple-choice exam, it would still be nice to create the study session with open-ended questions instead."

"It basically turned a week of studying into like a day... the amount of time saved that it gave me was insane."

By Karan Paranganat
Special thanks to Sammy Hamwi!

April 2025