How the Studentlytica AI Tutor answers from your own notes

Most AI chat tools answer from what they absorbed during training: a huge mix of web pages and books you cannot see. That is useful for general questions, but your course has its own lecture notes, its own definitions and its own way of explaining things. The Studentlytican AI Tutor works differently. It answers from the materials you give it, and shows you where every point came from.

1. You add your materials

Everything starts with a course, such as "Introduction to Economics" or "Organic Chemistry II". Into each course you add the materials you are studying from: PDF files, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, plain text or Markdown files, or text you paste in.

Studentlytica AI then reads each file. It pulls out the text, keeps track of which page, slide or section every part came from, and splits the text into short passages. It builds a search index over those passages, so it can later find them both by the words they contain and by what they mean.

This takes a little time for a long file. The material shows as being processed, then as ready. If some pages could not be read, for example scanned pages that are pictures of text, the material is marked as only partly readable and you are told which pages are affected, so you know what the AI Tutor can and cannot see.

2. You ask a question

On the AI Tutor page you choose a course and type your question. You can let the AI Tutor use every ready material in the course, or tick only the ones you want, for example just this week's lecture. Shortcuts such as "Explain this topic", "Give me an example" and "Test my understanding" help you get started.

While the AI Tutor works, you see what it is doing:

• Finding relevant passages in your materials. It searches your selected materials and picks the few passages that best match your question.
• Preparing your explanation. It writes an explanation using those passages.
• Checking the answer against your materials. Before you see the answer, Studentlytica AI checks that every source it refers to is a real passage from your own, current materials.

3. You get an answer, with its sources

Each answer is marked with how well your materials support it:

• Answered from your materials: your materials cover the question.
• Partly answered from your materials: your materials cover some of the question, but not all of it.
• Not enough evidence in your selected materials: your materials do not cover the question. Instead of guessing, the AI Tutor says so and suggests what to do, such as choosing more materials, rephrasing the question or adding a material that covers it.

Points in the answer carry numbered sources. Under Sources you can open the exact passage each number refers to, with its page or slide, and read it in context. If an explanation surprises you, check the source: that is what it is there for.

4. Your privacy

Your materials are private to your account. To write an answer, Studentlytica AI sends our AI provider, OpenAI, only the passages selected for that question and the question itself. We never send your name, email address, account details or profile. Your materials are not used to train AI models. You can delete a material, or your whole account, at any time. The Privacy Notice explains the details, including how long the AI provider may keep request content.

5. Your allowance

Each answered question uses one AI Tutor question from your monthly allowance. If an answer cannot be completed, it does not count. The Free plan includes a small number of AI Tutor questions each month, and Pro and Max include many more. See Pricing for the current numbers. Allowances reset on the first day of each month, Ghana time.

Tips for better answers

• Choose the right materials. If you know which lecture covers a topic, select it. Fewer, more relevant materials give sharper answers.
• Be specific. "Explain price elasticity of demand with an example from the lecture" works better than "explain economics".
• Ask follow-up questions. Ask for a simpler explanation, another example, or a question to test yourself.
• Read the sources. The AI Tutor is a guide to your materials, not a replacement for them.
• Then practise. Turn the topic into flashcards or a quiz in Study tools, and come back to it over the next few days.

Want to know where these ideas come from? Read What is an intelligent tutoring system? and AI tutors: what works, and what can go wrong.