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Product Updates5 min read

Teach Me or Just Answer: Your Tutor Now Has Two Ways to Help

Every subject chat now has a chip that chooses between two kinds of help. Teach me asks what you know, explains one step at a time and checks you followed. Just answer gives the full answer at once. Switch any time; the choice is kept per subject.

iTutor TeamSeptember 9, 2026

A tutor that only explains is a very good textbook. A tutor that teaches asks you something first. Explaining well is where most study tools stop. Teaching starts from what you already know, goes one step at a time, and checks that you followed before it moves on. We built that difference into the tutor. Every subject chat now has two ways to help, and you pick which one you want at any moment: Teach me and Just answer.

One chip, two kinds of help

On the message box you will find a small chip that says which kind of help you are getting. Tap it and choose. Just answer is the tutor you already know: ask, and it answers directly from your material, clearly and in full. Teach me turns the same tutor into a teacher. It finds out what you already know, explains one step at a time, and after each step it checks whether you followed before moving on. You can switch between the two whenever you like, mid-conversation, and nothing is lost. The tutor remembers your choice for each subject.

Just answer What is osmosis? Osmosis is the movement of water acrossa membrane from where water is moreconcentrated to where it is less. In yournotes, page 4, the potato experiment… Teach me What is osmosis? Before I explain: if you put a raisin inwater overnight, what happens to it? Tell me what you think first.
The same question, two kinds of help. Just answer gives you the whole explanation. Teach me starts by finding out what you already know.

What Teach me actually does

A good teacher never explains everything at once. Teach me works the way they do:

  • It asks first. Before the explanation, a quick question to see what you already understand, so the lesson starts where you are, not at page one.
  • One step at a time. Each idea is explained in a short piece, with an example from your own material.
  • It checks. After a step, the tutor asks you to apply it. It does not move on until you have tried, and it can tell the difference between a right answer, a nearly right one and a guess.
  • Hints before answers. Under every check there are three buttons: type your answer, get a hint, or see the answer. Hints come in rungs, a nudge, then a proper hint, then a worked example, and the answer is always there if you ask for it. What the tutor will not do is hand it over before you have had a real go.
  • It stays on the lesson. Wander off to a different topic and the tutor answers in one sentence and brings you back to the step you were on. Ask it to explain something more simply, or as if you were five, and it will.
  • You explain it back. At the end of a lesson it is your turn: explain the idea in your own words. Then it sums up what you now know and what to look at next.
Ask whatyou know Explainone step Check youfollowed Nextstep Sumup Hint stuck? a nudge, a hint, a worked example The lesson only moves on when you have tried.
The loop a good teacher runs in their head, made explicit. The check in the middle is the part a textbook cannot do.

When to use which

Teach me, before an examSay "Teach me this material" and the tutor walks the whole chapter with you, checking as it goes. What you cannot answer is exactly what to revise.
Teach me, for homeworkYou are meant to learn it, not copy it. The tutor helps you get there without doing it for you, and the hints run out only after you have tried.
Just answer, when you know itYou need a fact, a date, a definition, the formula you keep forgetting. Ask and get it, straight from your notes, with the page it came from.
Just answer, when time is shortTen minutes before class is not the moment for a Socratic dialogue. Switch, get the summary, switch back later.
Parents and teachersTeach me is the setting you want a student on. The tutor starts in Just answer; one tap puts a student in Teach me, and that choice then follows them everywhere. It never skips a step on its own, it keeps the lesson on the material it was given, and seeing the answer is a deliberate tap, not a shortcut.
Out loud, tooThe Voice room follows the same setting. Being asked a question by a voice, and answering it out loud, is the closest thing to a real lesson we know how to make.

Why the tutor cannot be talked out of the check

Language models are famously easy to persuade. Tell one "just give me the answer" and it usually will, whatever it was instructed. So the check does not live in the tutor's instructions alone. Our server remembers which question is still open and holds the lesson there until you have answered it, asked for a hint, or tapped to see the answer yourself. Those buttons are always there; what cannot happen is the tutor quietly giving up on the step because the conversation drifted.

Try it first A nudge A hint Worked example The answer Each rung is your tap, after a real go at the one before.
Stuck is allowed. The ladder always ends in the answer, with the reasoning, and every rung is your tap, not the tutor's guess.

Where to find it

Open any subject's chat and look for the chip on the message box. Choose Teach me and ask your question, or tap Teach me this material to be walked through your uploads concept by concept. Choose Just answer whenever you want the direct version. Your choice is kept for you across every subject, in the chat and in the Voice room.

Explaining and teaching are not the same thing, and a tutor should be good at both. That is what Teach me is for. If it still feels like explaining to you, tell us how, and we will keep building until it does not.

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