How to Use AI to Take Courses

📚 Overview

The idea is simple: place all your course materials in a folder, open it in VS Code, and use Claude Code as your personal AI tutor.

📚 Course Materials
slides, notes, recordings

→

💻 VS Code + Claude Code
your AI learning environment

→

🎓 Deep Understanding
ask anything, anytime

🛠 Step-by-Step Workflow

Follow these steps to set up your AI-powered study session.

Create a folder for your course

Create a folder named after your course (e.g., ProgrammingLanguages) and place all provided course materials inside it: lecture slides, lecture notes, recordings, handouts, etc.

Example folder structure:

ProgrammingLanguages/
  ├── lec1.pdf — Lecture 1 slides
  ├── lec2.pdf — Lecture 2 slides
  ├── lec3.pdf — Lecture 3 slides
  ├── lec4.pdf — Lecture 4 slides
  ├── lec5.pdf — Lecture 5 slides
  ├── notes.pdf — Lecture notes
  └── ...

💡 The more materials you provide, the better Claude can help. Include slides (PDF), notes, assignments, and any supplementary resources.

Open the folder in VS Code

Launch Visual Studio Code and open your course folder:

File → Open Folder... → Select your course folder (e.g., ProgrammingLanguages)

Then open the Claude Code extension panel in the sidebar.

Initialize with /init

In the Claude Code panel, type /init and press Enter. This creates a CLAUDE.md file that helps Claude understand your project context.

Claude Code

/init

ℹ /init scans your folder and creates a CLAUDE.md file. This gives Claude context about the materials in your folder.

Set up Claude as your course tutor

Type the following prompt to configure Claude as your personal course instructor. Replace {Course Name} with your actual course name.

prompt

Context:
Currently I am taking {Course Name} course where all the
contents are provided in the folder.

Role:
You are the instructor of the course who will answer my
questions about the course.

Command:
You need to answer my questions in detail and step-by-step.

Format:
If I request, save the illustration as a .md file.

⚠ Replace {Course Name} with the actual name of your course (e.g., Programming Languages, Data Structures, Machine Learning).

Start asking questions!

You are now ready to learn. Ask Claude anything about your course materials. See the example questions below for inspiration.

💡 Claude can read your PDF slides, understand diagrams, and provide detailed explanations. Don't hesitate to ask follow-up questions!

💬 Example Questions You Can Ask

Here are four types of questions to help you learn effectively.

Q1: Concept Check

Understand Each Slide

Ask Claude to explain every slide in a lecture in detail.

For the first lecture (i.e., lec1.pdf), explain each slide in detail.

Q2: Coding Practice

Implement Executable Code

Ask Claude to create runnable programs based on lecture content.

For the third lecture (i.e., lec3.pdf), I need you to implement programs that I can execute. I need you to add detailed comments illustrating the role of each line.

Q3: Deep Dive

Challenge and Verify Content

Question the slides and ask Claude to cross-check or find errors.

In page 15 of lec5.pdf, I guess the slide is wrong. The inference rule is missing some rules (the entire inference rules are provided in page 8).

Q4: Self-Assessment

Test Your Understanding

Ask Claude to generate quizzes based on the lecture content.

Based on the lecture notes and slides for lecture 5, give me a quiz for verifying my understanding of the lecture.

🌟 Tips for Effective Learning

Make the most out of your AI tutor with these tips.

Be specific with references

Always mention the exact file name and page number (e.g., "page 15 of lec5.pdf") so Claude can locate the exact content.

Ask follow-up questions

Don't stop at the first answer. Ask "Why?", "Can you give another example?", or "How does this relate to the previous topic?"

Save important explanations

Ask Claude to save explanations as .md files. This builds your own study notes that you can review later.

Run the code yourself

When Claude generates code examples, run them in VS Code's terminal. Modify the code and experiment to deepen your understanding.

Quiz yourself

Use the self-assessment feature regularly. Ask Claude to generate quizzes of varying difficulty to test your comprehension.