Decorative

GenAI: NotebookLM – A Personal Tool for Research & Productivity (Intermediate)

  • Pre-workshop activities: 10 min
  • Introductory presentation: 15 min
  • Active learning time: 60 min

What is NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is Google’s AI research and study workspace. Instead of chatting with a generic model, you load your own sources (papers, PDFs, Docs, Sheets, web pages, videos, notes), and NotebookLM builds a “thinking partner” that stays grounded in those materials.

You can then ask questions, generate explanations, and create outputs (reports, flashcards, slide decks, infographics, audio/video overviews) that are all based on the content you provided. This makes NotebookLM especially useful for courses, research projects, literature reviews, and complex real-world documents.

What does NotebookLM do?

At a high level, NotebookLM lets you:

  • Organize sources into notebooks for each course, project, or topic.
  • Chat with an AI that cites your sources, so you can see exactly where each answer comes from.
  • Run Deep Research to pull in high-quality web sources and save the structured report back into your notebook.
  • Generate learning tools like flashcards, quizzes, study guides, and concept summaries.
  • Create teaching and communication assets such as reports, timelines, infographics, and slide decks.
  • Produce audio and video overviews that turn long documents into podcast-style discussions or short explainers.

The goal is to reduce the time you spend skimming, copying, and re-formatting information so you can focus on understanding, analysis, and creation.

About this workshop

This intermediate workshop focuses on using NotebookLM as a personal RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) tool for research and productivity. Rather than treating AI as a general chatbot, we show you how to build a targeted assistant that:

  • Knows only what you give it (your sources)
  • Can explain, summarize, and compare those sources
  • Can transform them into slides, reports, and study materials

We will use live examples to show how NotebookLM handles typical academic and professional workflows, including note-taking, synthesizing articles, and preparing presentations.

Learning objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

  1. Describe the core capabilities of NotebookLM (source-grounded Q&A, summarization, translation, and document synthesis).
  2. Create and organize a notebook with multiple sources (PDFs, Docs, web pages, etc.).
  3. Use Notebook Guides / Studio tools to generate briefing docs, study guides, and short written reports.
  4. Generate and evaluate audio or video overviews, including how to verify their accuracy against the original sources.
  5. Create presentation assistance (slide titles, outlines, and speaking notes) for Google Slides or PowerPoint.
  6. Use flashcards and quizzes to turn your notebook into a study or revision tool.
  7. Summarize qualitative feedback (e.g., survey responses) into themes, insights, and next-step questions.

Key NotebookLM features we will explore

1. Source-grounded chat

  • Creating notebooks for a course, project, or research topic
  • Uploading PDFs, Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, web pages, and YouTube / media transcripts
  • Asking questions and reading answers with inline citations back to the original documents
  • Using the chat to check, compare, and explain complex passages

2. Deep Research

  • Using NotebookLM’s research panel to discover sources on the web
  • Understanding the difference between fast scans and deeper multi-step research
  • Importing the resulting research report and citations into your notebook
  • Using Deep Research to complement (not replace) traditional database searching

3. Studio tools: reports, mind maps, and timelines

  • Generating structured reports (briefing docs, study guides, FAQs, blog-style summaries)
  • Building mind maps and timelines to visualize people, events, or key concepts
  • Editing and refining generated content while always checking back against the sources

4. Audio and video overviews

  • Creating Audio Overviews (podcast-style two-host discussions of your sources)
  • Exploring interactive audio: pausing, asking follow-up questions, and steering the conversation
  • Generating Video Overviews that turn your material into short, narrated explainers
  • Using audio/video as alternative ways to review long or dense material

5. Slide decks and infographics

  • Using Slide Decks to automatically draft multi-slide presentations from your notebook
  • Using Infographics to condense key ideas into a single visual summary
  • Exporting and refining AI-generated decks and visuals in your preferred slide tool
  • Discussing strengths, limitations, and responsible use of these artifacts

6. Study tools: flashcards and quizzes

  • Auto-creating flashcards from lecture notes, readings, or project documents
  • Generating quizzes at different difficulty levels for self-testing
  • Using explanations and citations to deepen understanding (not just memorize answers)
  • Sharing flashcards/quizzes with peers for collaborative study

7. Infographics

  • Generate one-page visual summaries of a reading, project, or process.
  • Useful for posters, handouts, orientation materials, or quick overviews for community partners.
  • In the workshop, you will create an infographic from a small set of sources and then critique it for clarity, accuracy, and visual hierarchy.

8. Slide Deck

  • Draft a multi-slide presentation (outline, slide titles, bullet points, and speaking notes) directly from your notebook.
  • You will practice taking an AI-generated deck and editing it like a human expert: tightening the narrative, removing fluff, checking every claim against citations, and adapting the tone to your real audience.

We treat these features as first-draft helpers, not final products. The focus is on using AI to get from “blank slide” to a structured story faster—while you stay in control of the message and design.

Responsible and critical use

Throughout the workshop, we will emphasize:

  • Verification – always checking AI-generated text, slides, and summaries against the original sources.
  • Citation and academic integrity – using NotebookLM as a reading and thinking partner, not as a ghost-writer.
  • Privacy and data handling – what kinds of documents are appropriate to upload, and when not to use cloud tools.
  • Bias awareness – understanding that outputs reflect both your uploaded sources and the underlying model’s limitations.

Who is this workshop for?

This intermediate session is designed for:

  • Students working on essays, theses, capstone projects, and literature reviews
  • Instructors preparing lectures, slides, or course materials
  • Researchers and staff who need to summarize reports, policies, or long technical documents
  • Anyone comfortable with basic GenAI tools who wants deeper, source-grounded workflows

You do not need to be an AI expert; basic familiarity with web tools and text editors is enough.

Before the workshop

To get the most out of the session, please:

  • Review the Pre-Workshop Activities page in this site for short videos and AI usage guidelines.
  • Bring a laptop (recommended) and, if possible, a PDF or document you regularly work with (e.g., a reading, report, or project document) that you can safely upload to NotebookLM.

Generative AI Workshop Pathway

This workshop is part of our Generative AI Workshop Pathway, which offers a progression from foundational to advanced research and productivity skills: