Revelations from Actually Talking to an AI Tutor
Or: How I Learnt to Stop Typing and Love the Chat
At Mindjoy we recently launched a feature called 'Quiz Me': a zero-effort way for educators to get their students actively engaging with lesson content through AI-powered conversations. If you've already set up a Lesson then once the student has completed the work for you, they can engage the feature and be quizzed on their understanding of the lesson at hand. The tutor engages in genuine dialogue with learners about what they've just studied, identifies knowledge gaps with our usual accuracy, and essentially handles the heavy lifting of formative assessment. It's a really nice feature that is a lot of fun to demo, and actually talk to the tutor, aloud, like a normal human would.
We even extended this as a Voice mode that’s soon to be available to every AI tutor, that means you can sit there working on a problem and just talk to the tutor like you would a very expensive 1:1 tutor.
However, something unexpected happened. After demoing it to our communities of practice, I found myself spending hours talking to these AI tutors about topics I'd literally written the content for. Three consecutive evenings, to be precise, plus several morning sessions. And somewhere between explaining mineral processing techniques whilst washing up and discussing enterprise design principles on my morning walk, I had a genuine revelation: this was doing something fundamentally different to my brain than any text-based AI interaction ever had.
The implications for where learning can go, not just with Mindjoy, but with AI in general are rather extraordinary.
The Tyranny of the Text Box: A Psychological Barrier We've All Accepted
Let's address the elephant in the room: typing answers feels like submitting your soul for judgement. Every keystroke carries the weight of permanence, doesn't it? Even in a casual AI chat, there's something about seeing your half-formed thoughts materialise in Arial 12 that triggers deeply embedded academic trauma. It's that dream where your GCSE coursework submission is due and you haven't studied all year, but now the anxiety follows you everywhere.
The psychological impact of this is more significant than we typically acknowledge. Research in cognitive load theory suggests that the act of writing itself (especially typing) engages different neural pathways than speaking. When we type, we're not just thinking about the content; we're thinking about spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and how our words will be perceived when read. It's exhausting. Don't judge me for misspelling 'and' for the umpteenth time today 😭.
But conversations? Conversations are beautifully ephemeral. They float away into the ether. You can be wrong in a conversation and it doesn't sit there, mocking you from the screen in perpetuity. You can think out loud, circle back, contradict yourself, all the things actual learning requires. When you're talking to an AI tutor, you're not performing; you're genuinely exploring. And that's when the magic happens.
Your brain stops trying to craft the perfect response and starts actually engaging with the concepts. It's the difference between writing a carefully worded email to your line manager and having a productive chat by the coffee machine. Same information exchange, completely different cognitive load, and remarkably different learning outcomes.
Socrates Has Entered the Chat
Here's where it gets properly interesting from a pedagogical perspective. When we explain Socratic questioning in text-based tutoring, students often push back initially. "Why won't it just give me the answer?" they protest, expecting ChatGPT-style instant gratification. They have to work for their understanding, and for someone who's never encountered pre-Google web search, it feels strange in a text format. As a colleague observed during a recent training session: "There's a reason Socrates didn't live too long." 😬 Yikes.
But in audio? Socratic dialogue feels as natural as debating with your mate about whether Die Hard qualifies as a Christmas film. (It absolutely does. This is not up for discussion.) The back-and-forth happens at the speed of thought, not at the speed of your typing skills. You fire back responses quickly, almost instinctively, and before you know it, you've reasoned your way to genuine understanding, without feeling like you've done any heavy cognitive lifting at all.
This isn't just anecdotal observation; it's grounded in educational theory. The Socratic method has endured for over two millennia because it mirrors natural human dialogue patterns. It's how we've been learning since, well, Socrates was irritating people in the agora. The method works because it forces active construction of knowledge rather than passive reception. But here's the kicker: it works significantly better when delivered in the medium it was designed for: spoken conversation.
Permission to Interrupt?
Can we talk about the absolute revelation that is being able to interrupt an AI mid-explanation? This feature alone has transformed my interaction patterns completely. We've all experienced it: you ask a straightforward question, the AI begins responding, and within seconds it's explaining something three levels too complex whilst you sit there thinking "no, stop, go back, you've completely lost me at 'quantum superposition.'"
With voice interaction, you simply... interrupt. Like a normal conversation. Once you get over the millennial guilt of cutting someone off (yes, I still apologise to Alexa), it's genuinely liberating. No more waiting for the AI to finish its dissertation on tangentially related topics. No more scrolling back up through walls of text to find where it lost you. Just "Hang on, say that bit again about ionic bonds?" or "Wait, can we go back to the basic concept first?"
And here's something we haven't talked about enough: this is absolutely transformative for non-native English speakers studying in English-medium institutions. Imagine being assessed in your second (or third, or fourth) language, constantly worrying about perfect grammar, spelling, and academic phrasing whilst simultaneously trying to grasp complex concepts. It's like trying to juggle whilst learning to ride a unicycle - technically possible, but why make it that hard?
With voice interaction, these students can discuss thermodynamics or literary theory with the same casual confidence they use when chatting to the sandwich shop worker who knows their order. "No actually, I don't want tomatoes" requires the same linguistic courage as "Can you pause for a second and clarify what were you saying about entropy?" when you're speaking rather than writing. The concepts and vocabulary develop naturally through conversation, without the paralysing fear of producing grammatically perfect academic English.
We're seeing great results with our multilingual students at partner universities. They're engaging more, asking clarifying questions they'd never type out, and, crucially, they're learning the academic vocabulary in context, the way language is actually acquired. Not through memorising word lists, but through using terms repeatedly in natural conversation until they just... stick.
The efficiency gains are substantial. Conversations that would take 20 minutes of careful typing, reading, and re-reading happen in five minutes of natural dialogue. For students with different learning needs, particularly those with dyslexia or processing differences, this is transformative. They're no longer fighting the medium to access the learning.
The Productivity Hack That Actually Delivers
I spent 25 minutes practising Spanish whilst making dinner last week. Twenty-five productive minutes. That's longer than most Duolingo users manage in a month, and I was simultaneously ensuring my family didn't eat burnt chicken. The following day, I reviewed manufacturing processes whilst walking the dog, and discussed assessment rubrics whilst folding laundry.
This is the genuine game-changer for adult learners and busy students alike. All those dead zones in your day: commuting, cooking, walking, general pottering about, suddenly become legitimate learning opportunities. And not the passive kind where you half-listen to some educational podcast whilst your mind wanders. Actual, interactive learning where you're reasoning through complex problems whilst chopping onions.
The hands-free aspect cannot be overstated. Your hands are free. Your eyes are free. You can learn whilst doing literally anything that doesn't require your full verbal attention. It's multitasking that genuinely works, unlike that time we all convinced ourselves we could effectively work whilst watching Netflix. (We couldn't. We still can't. There's a phonological loop, it gets stuck on too much linguistic input. Please stop trying.)
For students juggling part-time work, caring responsibilities, or simply trying to fit learning around life, this flexibility is revolutionary. It's not about finding dedicated study time anymore; it's about transforming existing time into learning opportunities.
The Feedback Loop That Actually Functions
Here's what properly sealed the deal for me: getting an immediate, actionable summary of what you need to work on, right after the conversation ends. No waiting for marks. No cryptic feedback three weeks later when you've forgotten what the assignment was even about. No vague "good effort" comments that help nobody. Just clear, specific feedback: "Here's what you've mastered, here's what needs work, here are the specific topics to revisit."
Students can squeeze in a productive 10-minute review session between classes, walking from one building to another, and receive genuinely useful feedback on what to focus on next. It's spaced repetition that happens naturally, not because another app is sending you aggressive notifications featuring disappointed owl emojis.
The immediate nature of this feedback taps into what educational psychologists call the 'testing effect': the principle that retrieving information strengthens memory more than repeated studying. But unlike traditional testing, there's no anxiety, no grades, just constructive guidance on where to focus your efforts.
Implementation: Making It Work in Practice
For educators considering this approach, the implementation is refreshingly straightforward. The Quiz Me feature requires no complex setup, no lengthy configuration, no weekend lost to "professional development" that's mainly you reading how-tos that don't work. Students can access it immediately after a lesson, during homework time, or as part of revision sessions.
We're seeing particularly strong results when it's used for:
- Lesson reviews (students engage in spaced repetition without prompting)
- Homework tasks that feel less like traditional homework
- Exam preparation that doesn't induce panic attacks
- Quick knowledge checks that don't feel like tests
If you’re going to use the Voice mode in a standard tutor chat this opens it up even more, with every interaction being possible through a literal chat… although I’ll be doing a follow up blog post on the coolest feature of that mode. Spoilers!
The data we're gathering suggests students who engage with voice-based tutoring spend significantly more time in learning activities, not because they have to, but because the friction has been removed from the process.
The Bottom Line: A Call to Thoughtful Action
Look, I'm not saying this will revolutionise education overnight. We've heard that song before, haven't we? (coughs in interactive whiteboard). But there's something genuinely different happening here that deserves proper attention - if it can suck me in, someone who spends their days immersed in AI based learning and has seen so-called game changers many times, then it can inspire and work for anyone.
The Quiz Me feature isn't just another edtech tool that sounds brilliant in a staff meeting but dies a quiet death in implementation. It's learning that fits into the weird, fragmented reality of our modern lives. It's revision that doesn't feel like revision. It's assessment that doesn't trigger anyone's deeply embedded exam trauma.
Show your students. Use it for homework. Try it for exam prep. Use it yourself to finally understand what your students are supposed to be learning in that module you've been teaching for three years - as silly as this sounds, through this I've discovered that my explanation of recursion could use some work!
Because it turns out the future of education sounds a lot less like typing into the void and a lot more like having a remarkably patient friend who knows everything, never judges you for asking the same question seventeen times, and doesn't mind one bit if you interrupt them mid-sentence.
After all our technological advances, all our platforms and apps and systems, who knew the secret to better learning was simply returning to what humans do best: having a proper conversation?
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and apologise to my AI tutor for cutting it off mid-explanation about thermodynamics yesterday. Some habits, it seems, die rather hard.
