Transcription de la vidéo Analyzing scientific articles (NotebookLM)

In this tutorial on scientific article analysis, I want to introduce you to a tool that really has the power to transform the way students interact with scientific articles. It’s called NotebookLM. I will show you after.

First, you need to clarify the objective. We want a deeper understanding of certain scientific texts. You need to read them first, then go deeper using the tool. Next, you need to identify your specific needs, meaning the topics you need to cover in your work, and then you can give a list of questions you'd like to ask the author. Lastly, the added value of this use case is to compare and deepen your understanding of the text.

Now let’s look at NotebookLM. This is a tool that will only generate results relating to the articles or documents you submit. This is not like another generative artificial intelligence tool that will scan the internet or databases. The quality of the results you get will really depend on the quality of your texts.

We’ll use an example on remote work and productivity. I have downloaded a few documents, and I drop them directly into the tool. Now I can select all or only one of them to analyze. Now I just have to write the questions I want the tools to answer or expand upon. I start with my first question.

The prompt is entered in the tool: Which articles share similar or complementary perspectives?

So here, you see that the tool names the articles and the citations in the article. You click them here to see from where the information was drawn. Then, right away, you can check the accuracy of the information.

If you like the results, you can save them and it will make a post-it. Then you can go back to it.

Now we’ll ask another question.

The request is entered in the tool: Are there any biases identified in the articles?

You'll notice that NoteBook also proposes questions above the question field, but I'd say it's much better to have some questions already prepared before using the tool, to be even more efficient.

We see that the tool has several biases. You can always click the number you see in the results to find the exact location of the citated text, where the tool took the information. Now we can save the note.

I just want to come back to why I said it's important to compare your understanding of the text with that of the tool. This will really help you memorize the information. It will develop your critical thinking skills. And it will support independent learning.