UVic GenAI NotebookLM Workshop

1What it does

Open workshop materials from the University of Victoria Libraries' GenAI workshop series — a complete, classroom-tested introduction to NotebookLM built by academic librarians who teach this tool to students and faculty. The repository is the workshop's source: lesson plan, hands-on activities, discussion framing around research-integrity and source-citation questions, and the examples the facilitators actually run. Unlike a how-to blog post, it was written for a room — activities have timing, the questions have pedagogical intent, and the whole thing assumes a mixed-skill audience. For anyone teaching NotebookLM (librarians, instructors, workshop leads, student mentors) it is the closest thing to a ready-made curriculum the ecosystem has.

2When to use it

Reach for it when you're teaching NotebookLM rather than just using it — a workshop, a library instruction session, a course module on AI-assisted research. The materials assume the facilitator will adapt them; the activities are designed to be run live, and the discussion prompts address the questions that actually come up in classrooms (citation integrity, when AI- summarization crosses into shortcut, how NotebookLM's grounding differs from ChatGPT). Skip it for solo learning — the format is facilitator-shaped; a self-learner gets more from the product's own help docs and a prompt bank.

3How to get started

Read the repo as a lesson plan: the main document is the workshop outline — activities in order, with learning objectives and the NotebookLM features each one exercises. Before running it, re-check the activities against current NotebookLM — the workshop predates some features (audio overviews, mind maps) that a modern class would want included; the structure holds even where the feature list aged. The CC license makes adaptation explicit: copy, localize, re-brand for your institution — that is the intended use, not a gray area.

4Configuration

Adaptation is the configuration: swap the example sources for material from your discipline (the activities are domain-agnostic but land better with relevant sources), adjust timing to your session length, and update feature references to current NotebookLM. If your institution has an AI-use policy, the workshop's integrity framing is where it plugs in — the materials already treat academic-integrity discussion as a core activity rather than a disclaimer slide. For asynchronous delivery, the repo converts cleanly into a self-paced module — activities become assignments, discussion prompts become forum posts.

5Things to know

• Library-authored means integrity-first — the framing of source-grounded AI as a research skill (not a shortcut) is the workshop's intellectual core and the thing worth keeping in any adaptation.
• Feature drift is expected — NotebookLM ships fast; verify named features against the current UI before a live session.
• CC-BY-SA licensing — adaptations must carry attribution and share alike; easy to honor, worth knowing before institutional redistribution.
• The strongest artifact here is the activity design — the NotebookLM mechanics are documented elsewhere; the pedagogy is what this repo contributes.
• The facilitation notes are the quiet treasure — timing cues, common student questions, and where learners typically stall are the parts you can't get from product docs.
• It sits well next to a prompt bank — the workshop gives the room structure; a prompt collection gives students take-home material.
• For institutions writing their own AI curriculum, the repo is a working model of the genre — the structure (objectives → activity → discussion) is the template worth copying even where the content changes.
• Because it comes from a workshop series, sibling repos cover adjacent tools — the same institutional voice applied to other GenAI products makes it part of a broader curriculum.
• The workshop format also fits train-the-trainer — facilitators who've never taught NotebookLM can run it end-to-end from the materials alone.

6Related on the map

References

• Repository
• NotebookLM help center