Dr. April Crenshaw, Associate Professor and Interim Mathematics Department Head at Chattanooga State Community College, offers this example as a quick end-of-unit wrap-up for her Precalculus Algebra students. The course is a general education college-level algebra pathway course for first-year students, but the strategy is widely applicable. Before class, students read a short blog-style summary of the unit that was written from course materials in NotebookLM. The reading does not introduce anything new. It simply pulls together what was already covered across the unit and puts it in one place, using the same kinds of real-life contexts used during lessons. Using Unit 3 as an example, the blog-style summary revisits how order matters in multi-step processes (composition and order of operations), how logarithms connect to exponentials as inverses, why negative exponents mean reciprocals, and how power models show up in real systems like metabolic rate. It also reminds students how piecewise functions can be used to model things like parking garage rates and grading scales.
At the start of the next class period, the class spends about 10 to 15 minutes talking through the reading. Students come in with one quick note: a Unit 3 idea that feels clearest now and the real-life example that helped it make sense. Students share that idea with a partner first, then there is a fast whole-class recap. Dr. Crenshaw asks students to name the concept, restate the rule in their own words, and connect it back to a practical situation. This gives students a low-stakes way to explain their thinking, hear how classmates are making sense of the same material, and ask questions they may still have. It also helps Dr. Crenshaw spot what needs to be addressed further before moving into the next unit.
Digital Resources
NotebookLM, LMS discussion board or Google Doc
NotebookLM supports this routine by efficiently turning an instructor’s formal notes and homework into a short, readable summary students can use for review. Students can also use NotebookLM to rephrase ideas in plain language or check their own understanding while they read. If Dr. Crenshaw uses a discussion board or shared Doc for student sharing about the reading, students post a one-sentence takeaway, which shows where the class is solid and where they are not yet there. This provides immediate formative data for the next lesson or review. Overall, this review process is a simple, quick routine that helps students pull a unit together, recall the main ideas, and see how the pieces connect.
Digital Enablement
NotebookLM supports turning existing materials into a clear, blog-style recap that students can read quickly and revisit as needed. Students benefit from a single, coherent summary that connects topics they learned across multiple lessons of one unit. Dr. Crenshaw’s suggestions for successful implementation:
- Review/vet the blog-style summary before sharing with students to be sure it is accurate and highlights the most salient unit materials. Recreate if needed; Dr. Crenshaw’s second take was better than the first.
- Provide the unit summary in multiple formats (NotebookLM link, PDF, HTML, or plain text in the LMS) so students can access it with low bandwidth.
- Make the pre-class task short and clearly explained. Use instructional transparency so students know why they are completing this assignment.
- Keep the entire review routine brief and predictable to support course pacing. Use examples that match your students’ lives and the contexts already used during the unit.
- Treat the discussion as formative: a place to confirm understanding and clean up misconceptions, not a high-stakes assessment.
- During discussion, use pair-share first to lower the risk of speaking up, and invite multiple solution paths and examples.
- Clarify that AI tools are for review and explanation, not for replacing students’ own work.