Notebook LM as a Class Notes Resource

Kate Leipold, Mechanical Engineering
Kate Leipold, Principal Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering

In my CAD courses, I leverage NotebookLM to support the "watch and do" environment by uploading Zoom demo audio to generate high-quality transcripts and summaries. I share this notebook with my students so they can query the transcripts directly when they need to review specific demonstrations. I use the "Report" functionality in Notebook LM to create summaries of the lectures. If a student had a question about a particular concept, the Chat functionality may be able to provide that answer. Otherwise, the citations to the source documents should guide students to the proper lecture report. If that doesn't answer their question, they should be able to review the Zoom recording for that lecture date. As a bonus, I can ask the chat to summarize where we left off, or remind me of items that I need to complete.

To implement Kate's workflow for leveraging AI as a teaching and organizational assistant, you can follow these five main steps:

Consider creating an introduction document. Linking a document in Google drive allows you to update it any time. Naming it 00_Start_Here will keep it at the top of your source list.

Use Zoom to record your live demonstrations or lectures. Notebook had a 200MB limit per source, so only upload the audio files. This provides higher-quality transcripts, summaries, and to-do lists than standard auto-generated meeting notes.

Share the notebook containing these transcripts with your students. This allows them to query the course material directly, which is particularly helpful in "watch and do" environments where it is difficult for students to take manual notes while following along.

During class, capture voice-activated to-do items by speaking directly to the recording about tasks you need to remember. After class, you can ask the AI to extract these specific "notes to self" from the transcript so you don't lose track of administrative needs while teaching.

Using a Create Your Own Report template, you can detail what aspects should be reported and what should be omitted. Select only the most recent upload and paste the same prompt for consistent class summaries.

  Click here for another example of how RIT faculty have adapted their teaching methods in response to AI.