This guide will help you successfully introduce Thinker, Thinkific’s AI teaching assistant, to your audience. It includes practical guidance for you as the course owner, plus tips and ready-to-use prompts you can share directly with your learners.
What is Thinker?
Thinker is Thinkific’s built-in AI teaching assistant designed to support learners throughout their journey. It acts as an always-on course companion that helps learners move faster, find the right content, and deepen understanding, while reducing time spent answering repetitive questions by you and your team.
Thinker is especially effective at:
- Explaining concepts from your course
- Helping learners find specific lessons or topics
- Summarizing lessons and materials
- Quizzing learners to check understanding
- Providing practical examples
- Supporting problem-solving based on your content
Thinker is designed to support and guide learning, not replace your course. It works best when learners actively engage with your lessons and use Thinker for clarification, reinforcement, and guidance.
Learn more here: Thinker - AI Teaching Assistant.
What content does Thinker use and pull from?
Thinker only answers questions using the content learners already have access to in your course. This includes:
- Text lessons
- Video lessons
- PDF lessons
Additionally, you can upload standalone PDFs to help educate Thinker about supporting content that is not tied to a specific course. This is useful for things like reference guides, frameworks, policies, or shared context you want Thinker to draw from across your learning experience.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Thinker will only use the content that learners are permitted to access from your materials .
- Uploaded PDFs are used for understanding and answering questions, but Thinker will not provide direct source links to those documents.
- If course content or uploaded PDFs are updated, you will need to resync Thinker for these changes to be reflected.
Get Started Quickly with Thinker
Getting started with Thinker is intentionally fast and easy. Once your content is ready, you can complete the setup in just a few minutes.
Setup includes:
- Naming your Thinker
- Customizing the welcome message, voice, and tone
- Selecting which content to sync (including courses and any standalone PDFs)
- Testing responses privately before publishing
Once you publish, your learners will have access to Thinker immediately. There’s no complex configuration or ongoing setup required, and you can make adjustments over time as needed.
Get the Best Results from Thinker
Thinker is designed to work with your existing course content. In most cases, you can enable Thinker and start seeing value right away without changing how your course is built.
That said, a few small, optional adjustments can help Thinker deliver even more helpful responses over time.
Set the Right Voice and Tone
When setting up Thinker, you can configure its voice and tone to match your brand and audience. This helps shape how Thinker communicates with learners from day one. You can tailor things like:
- Formality and vocabulary
- Sentence length and structure
- Personality and conversational style
This one-time setup doesn’t require ongoing management but can help Thinker better align with your course experience.
Test before You Publish
You can test Thinker yourself before making it visible to your learners. Nothing is exposed to your audience until you publish, giving you the space to explore how Thinker responds, validate tone and accuracy, and make any adjustments as needed.
Start Simple: Enable and Observe
- Turn on Thinker once your course content is live
- Pay attention to the types of questions learners ask
- Use those questions as signals (not requirements) for improvement
Many customers find that Thinker immediately reduces repetitive questions and helps learners move through content more confidently, without any additional setup.
Small, Quick Adjustments that Can Boost Thinker’s Performance
While not mandatory, making these small tweaks to your existing course content can help Thinker find the best answers for your learners.
- Use clear lesson titles so learners can reference them in questions
- Name key concepts explicitly at least once in your content
- Add short text summaries to lessons where the content might not be as accessible to Thinker. (e.g. next to embedded iFrames)
- Guide learners, not the content: The biggest quality gains usually come from how learners ask questions, not from how your course is structured. Encourage learners to reference lessons, be specific, and ask one question at a time.
- Let learners shape the response: Learners can tailor Thinker’s answers themselves by asking for short or detailed explanations, beginner or advanced framing, step-by-step instructions, or practical examples.
Over time, patterns in learner questions may highlight opportunities to make small content improvements. Those updates are optional and can be made when it makes sense for your course, then resynced with Thinker as needed.
How to Share Thinker with Your Learners
The section below is written with your learners in mind, and can be shared directly with them. Many customers choose to copy this into a lesson, onboarding email, welcome post, or resource page inside their course.
Shareable Announcement Copy
You can use the message below to introduce Thinker to your learners. Many customers send this as a short email, post it as a welcome announcement, or include it as the first lesson in a course. Feel free to adapt the wording to match your voice and brand.
Subject: A smarter way to learn inside [Course Name]
Hi [First Name],
We’re excited to introduce Thinker, your new AI-powered teaching assistant — now available inside [Course Name].
This is not just another chatbot. Thinker is built directly into your learning experience and trained on the same lessons and materials you’re working through. That means it can give you course-specific answers, guidance, and support whenever you need it.Think of it as your personal study partner you can use to:
- Ask quick questions about the course and get clear answers
- Quiz yourself on key topics to boost retention
- Find the right lesson or resource when you feel stuck
- Get course-specific guidance without leaving the learning experience
Here are a few examples of what you can ask:
- Where should I begin if I am new to [topic]?
- Can you explain [specific concept] in simple terms?
- Which lesson should I review to practice [skill]?
To access Thinker, click the Teaching Assistant icon in the top right corner of the course player.
Thinker is here to support your learning throughout the course. If you ever need deeper help or technical support, you can always reach out through [community name] or contact us at [support email].This feature will continue to improve over time, so we encourage you to try it out, ask questions, and explore what it can do.
Best,
[Your name]
How to Get the Best Answers from Thinker
Some tips for better results:
- Ask one question at a time
- Be specific rather than vague
- Reference a lesson title when possible
- Share your goal and where you feel stuck
If an answer feels off, try reframing your question back to the course, for example:
- Based on what this course teaches in [lesson title], how should I think about [topic]?
- Using only the course materials, what is the best explanation of [concept]?
Example Prompts You Can Use
Explaining a concept
- In this course, what does [concept] mean? Explain it in plain language in five to seven sentences.
- Explain [concept] like I am 5, using an everyday analogy.
- Explain [concept] at an advanced level. Include key terms, why it matters, and one common misconception.
- I think [concept] means [my understanding]. Where am I wrong, and what is the correct framing?
Finding a lesson or topic
- In [lesson title], where does it cover [topic]? Tell me what to look for.
- I am looking for the part of the course that explains [description]. Which lesson is that most likely in?
- I am trying to learn [goal]. Which lesson should I start with and why?
Summarizing content
- Summarize [lesson title] in five bullets and end with the three most important takeaways
- Turn [lesson title] into a checklist of actions I can apply
- Summarize the parts of [lesson title] that matter most for [my goal]
Checking knowledge
- Quiz me on [topic] from this course. Six questions, mixed difficulty. Do not show answers until I respond.
- Give me three realistic scenarios based on [topic] and ask what I would do. Then grade my answers using the course.
Practical examples
- Give me a practical example of [concept] in action that matches what this course teaches.
- My context is [one to two sentences]. Show me how to apply [concept] step by step.
- Give one correct example and one incorrect example of [concept] and explain why.
Problem solving
- I am stuck on [problem]. My goal is [goal]. What I tried is [attempts]. Ask clarifying questions, then suggest a step-by-step fix.
- Help me troubleshoot [problem] using only what this course covers.