Answers in iTutor can now be tried, not only read. When an explanation has numbers in it, a process with steps, or a page of your own file, the tutor adds one small piece under its answer: sliders that change the numbers, a walk through the steps one at a time, or the page itself, opened beside the chat.
Reading that a margin is 20% is not the same as watching it change while you move the price. Being told the order of the water cycle is not the same as going round it yourself. And when a student asks about page 3, the clearest answer starts with page 3 in front of them. That is what these pieces are for. None of them is a test: nothing is marked, and quizzes stay where they are, in quizzes.
Change the numbers and watch what happens
When your question has numbers or a formula in it, such as a price and a cost, a dose, a speed or a graph, the tutor shows its working and the result as usual. Under it comes a piece with the same numbers on sliders. Move one and every result updates at once. For a function, a graph redraws as you change it, and you can drag along the line to read off values.
The answer itself ends with one "what if" with new numbers, such as "if the price rose to 120, the margin would be 33%", so it teaches on its own even if you never touch the piece.
Two more things come with every piece. Some pieces ask for your guess before you move anything; it is optional and never marked. And a line under the piece, iTutor saw, notes what you tried. The tutor reads it, so you can ask "why did the margin go up?" in your next message and it knows what you moved.
Go through a process one step at a time
For a process or a cycle, such as mitosis, the water cycle, a titration or the stages of wound healing, the tutor adds a step-by-step piece instead of a static diagram. Each step has a short explanation, and you move through them with Back and Next, or press Play. For cycles the stages are drawn in a loop, and for some topics, like the stages of mitosis, the picture changes with each step.
Your page, beside the chat
Ask about a page of your own file, for example "Explain page 3 of my notes", "Go through slide 2" or "What does my photo say?", and the tutor opens that page beside the chat. On a computer it sits in a panel next to the conversation, so you can read both at once; on a phone it opens as a full-screen sheet. The passage the answer used is highlighted on the page.
From there you can:
- Walk through the page. Tap Walk me through this page and the tutor explains it part by part, with a numbered mark on the page beside each part.
- Tap any sentence. The tutor explains that sentence in the context of the page.
- Tap part of a picture. On a diagram, a scanned page or a photo of handwritten notes, tap the part you mean and the tutor explains what is there.
- Move around. Go to the next or previous page and zoom in, without leaving the chat.
The pages also open from your sources. Every source under an answer now has a small book button: tap it and the page the answer came from opens beside the chat. When you ask about a particular page, the source shows that page only.
Every kind of file
The page view works with the files students actually upload:
- PDFs, including scanned books and handouts.
- Photos of notes, worksheets and the whiteboard.
- PowerPoint decks, slide by slide.
- Word documents, now with real pages. A Word file is laid out into pages, so you can ask for page 3 of a Word file too, and the page that opens is the page the tutor read.
If you ask for a page that is not there, say page 50 of a five-page file, the tutor tells you how many pages the file has and does not pretend otherwise.
In your language
The pieces and the page view work in all 12 languages of the app. The pieces are written in the language you ask in, the page view follows the language of the app, and Arabic and Urdu read right to left.
Still the same tutor. Every piece is built from the same material as the answer, and the answer always stands on its own: every piece also has a plain text version. The tutor adds a piece only when it helps, so a greeting, a quick definition or a yes or no question gets a normal reply.
How to try it
- Open a subject with your own files and keep the chat in Just answer mode. In Teach me mode, lessons keep their own step-by-step flow for now.
- Ask a question with numbers in it, ask for the steps of a process, or ask about a page of your file.
- Move a slider, step through the process, or tap a sentence on your page.
Interactive answers and the page view are available on every plan.