Google has tweaked education with the unveiling of its “Learn-Your-Way” AI-augmented textbook, a smart learning tool designed to adapt to each student’s unique pace, style, and needs.
In a bold move to reshape digital education, Google introduced an innovative tool that combines traditional educational content with generative AI tailored to adapt to students’ needs in real time, to drive personalisation and make studying more intuitive, interactive, and effective.
The new innovative tool basically takes whatever boring chapter a student is supposed to read and rebuilds it around stuff he or she actually gives a damn about.
Christopher Itua, head of industrial services and development at the Institute for Industrial Technology (IIT), said institutions and students can leverage the new tool for improved learning outcomes.
“It will help institutions and students. It will help put Mathematics, Physics and Technical communication online. From the textbook, it will generate a teaching video and summary.
“The students can learn online these general courses that are not our core courses which are practical intensive. It’ll really help learning,” he said.
For instance, a student who is into basketball and has to learn Newton’s laws, the AI-augmented tool would turn all the examples in the book into dribbling and shooting.
Tech experts emphasised that the innovation enhances personalised learning. The tool generates different ways to consume the same information, such as mind maps helping learners think visually, audio lessons, with weird simulated teacher conversations, timeliness, and quizzes that change based on what the user is screwing up.
Ibukun Bankole, a tech expert, describes “Learn Your Way” as an innovative step forward that promises to enhance holistic learning, especially for secondary and tertiary students, and for anyone curious about the range of available subjects.
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“What stands out most for me is how it moves beyond conventional reading and writing to integrate multimodal learning approaches for auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic learners. This enables different learners to engage through multiple sensory channels, truly learning at their own pace, according to their unique needs and personal interests.
“The personalisation feature is also a big plus because instead of a one-size-fits-all model, students can adapt how they learn, whether they need extra help, think differently, or have special needs. This is particularly valuable given how mainstream classrooms often overlook individual differences,” she said.
On the practical side, she said the tool covers specific courses such as world history, biology, physics, economics, astronomy, psychology, and more.
However, she frowned at the fact that it is basically drawn from the American curriculum, which is different from the British curriculum that is more widely adopted globally, especially in African schools. She emphasised that despite the potential benefits, a large proportion of Africans cannot access the tool.
According to the International Telecommunication Union reports, only 38 per cent of Africans used the internet in 2024, the lowest, and far from the 68 per cent global average.
“That’s a wide gap, affecting rural, underserved, and even many urban students who lack regular internet or suitable devices,” she noted.
She reiterated that with Google’s offline access and device-friendly versions, there is potential for more equal access, allowing all students, whatever their background, to benefit from modern education and personalised learning opportunities.
Besides, experts argue that though textbooks are the cornerstone of education, they have a fundamental limitation, being a one-size-fits-all medium.
Hence, they say “Learn Your Way” presents an approach for transforming and augmenting textbooks using generative AI, adding layers of multiple representations and personalisation while maintaining content integrity and quality.
“At any given time, with ‘Learn Your Way’, the learner can switch to alternative views of the entire material, such as narrated slides or an audio lesson, which are also personalised.
“Learn Your Way is therefore augmented with multiple views of the material which learners can interact with and choose from,” they say.
First, it can generate such content for any material the learner is interested in. Second, it can do so while adapting to the specific attributes and needs of the learner.
This is in contrast to the generation of personalised learning material by human educators, which is a much longer process and is impractical to do at scale.
Third, AI can be used to generate different representations of the material, including visualisations and audio-based formats, which are known to further enhance the efficacy of learning.
Moreover, they emphasised that “Learn Your Way” could be embedded in learning platforms in ways that will provide teachers with control and insights into the learning process. The above feedback processes could then be designed to optimise learning efficacy.
Above all, the tool, they say, demonstrates how the imaginative use of generative AI, grounded in solid learning science principles and crafted and evaluated with pedagogical experts, opens up exciting opportunities to enhance learning.
