Study skills
How to study with an AI tutor: a session that teaches, and what to do before and after it
Studying with an AI tutor works when you treat it as a tutor and not as a search box. Bring one specific problem rather than a topic, show it the actual page, say out loud where you stopped, interrupt the moment you are lost, and let it make you do the next one before you move on. Afterwards, test the method on a fresh set of problems rather than the one you brought. The session is the middle third of studying, not the whole of it.
By CANtutor AI team, EditorialPublished Updated
What should you bring to a session?
One problem, not a topic. Integration by parts is a topic; question seven on this week's sheet is a problem. A tutor that is handed a topic gives a lecture, and you have a textbook for that. A tutor that is handed a problem can find the exact step where your understanding stopped, and that step is the entire point of the session.
Bring the surrounding documents too. The assignment brief tells the tutor what is being asked; the rubric tells it what earns the marks; your own attempt, however wrong, tells it where you went off the road. In CANtutor AI you can upload all three to the assignment's own workspace before the session, or hold the page up to the camera once it starts.
How do you run the session itself?
Show it the page. Turn on the camera and hold the sheet up, or share the tab with the assignment in it, or read the question aloud. Any of those beats retyping, because the tutor then works from the real problem rather than your summary of it.
Talk. The microphone is off until you hold the talk button, and the tutor answers the moment you release it, so say where you stopped and why, in your own words. Then watch the whiteboard rather than only listening: the working appears line by line as it explains, and for anything geometric the drawing is most of the explanation.
Interrupt. Saying wait, go back, or why did you do that step, is the single most useful habit in a session. A tutor you never interrupt is a lecture. The mode switch is part of this: start in Learn if the idea is new, move to Practice once it has landed, and the tutor picks up the change while you are still talking.
What should the tutor make you do?
The next one. A session that ends with the tutor having solved your problem has taught you one problem. A session that ends with you having solved the following problem, with the tutor watching and hinting only when you stall, has taught you the method. Practice mode is built for exactly this: it waits for your attempt, names the one place it went wrong, and gives the smallest hint that gets you moving.
Save what was worth keeping. The whiteboard has a save button that suggests a title and description, and saved boards are searchable later. A session recap is generated when you end the call, so an hour of talking leaves written notes behind without you having taken any.
What do you do after the session?
Test the method on problems you did not bring. Generate a practice quiz on the same narrow topic, work it without checking, and read the worked solutions afterwards, including the ones you got right, because a right answer reached by a slow method is worth knowing about. If a question stalls you, that is the next session's problem.
For a topic that needs more than one evening, the course builder generates a multi-day course with check questions at each step, and the exam study plan lays out a dated plan between now and the exam from your own coursework. Neither replaces the session; they decide what the next session is about.
What does this cost in credits?
Sessions and generated material spend credits, and the credits meter shows a per-feature breakdown of where they went. The plans and trial terms are on /plans. The practical consequence is the same as with a human tutor's hour: arrive with the specific problem, not the whole course, and you get more from every minute.
Questions people ask about this
How long should a session be?
As long as one problem takes to understand, plus one more problem done by you. If you find yourself an hour in and on the fourth topic, you have drifted into a lecture; stop and generate a practice set instead.
What if I cannot talk out loud where I am?
A text chat with file upload runs alongside the voice call, with the same tutor in the same session, for when you cannot talk or want the answer in writing.
Does the tutor remember previous sessions?
Every past session is kept with its topic and length, a recap is written for each, and your saved boards, decks and explainers are searchable. Start a new session by opening the recap of the last one if you want to continue where you left off.