Teaching Assistant
An AI agent that helps you understand complex research papers and documents. Get instant explanations, simplifications, expansions, and answers to your questions, right when you need them.
What is the Teaching Assistant?
The Teaching Assistant is a specialized AI agent in SpatialRead designed to help you comprehend complex research papers, academic articles, and technical documents. Unlike general AI chatbots, this agent is optimized specifically for learning and understanding scholarly content at your own pace and level.
Whether you're a student encountering unfamiliar concepts, a researcher exploring a new field, or a professional reading technical literature, the Teaching Assistant adapts to your needs. It can simplify jargon-heavy passages, explain technical concepts in depth, expand on brief mentions with additional context, and answer your specific questions about the content.
The magic happens through text highlighting: simply select any passage in your document, and choose from four instant actions: Simplify, Explain, Expand, or Chat. Each action gives you precisely the type of help you need at that moment, making complex reading feel manageable and engaging.
What Can the Teaching Assistant Do?
Simplify Complex Text
Break down jargon-heavy passages into clear, accessible language. Replace technical terms with everyday words while maintaining accuracy.
Explain Concepts
Get clear definitions and explanations of technical terms, methodologies, theories, and concepts mentioned in the document.
Expand for More Depth
Dive deeper into topics with additional technical details, context, implications, and connections to broader concepts.
Answer Custom Questions
Ask anything about the highlighted text or document, from clarification questions to requests for examples or related work.
Analyze Figures & Diagrams
Upload images of figures, charts, equations, or diagrams to get detailed explanations of visual content.
Explore Related Research
Learn about authors, related papers, seminal work, and broader research context beyond what's in the document.
How People Use the Teaching Assistant
1. Simplify Jargon-Heavy Text
When you encounter a passage filled with technical terminology or complex sentence structures that are hard to parse, use the Simplify action. The Teaching Assistant rephrases the content in clear, accessible language while preserving the original meaning and accuracy.
How to use: Highlight complex text, click "Simplify"
What you get: The same content rewritten in plain language with technical terms replaced by everyday words, complex sentences broken into simpler ones, and analogies added where helpful, all while maintaining the core meaning.
Breaking down technical jargon into clear, understandable language
2. Explain Technical Concepts
When you need to understand what a term, method, or concept actually means, use the Explain action. The Teaching Assistant provides clear definitions, relevant background, and connections to related ideas, drawing from both the document and broader knowledge.
How to use: Highlight unfamiliar terms or concepts, click "Explain"
What you get: Clear explanations that define key terms, provide relevant background context from the document, explain how concepts work, and connect ideas to help you build a complete understanding.
Getting clear definitions and explanations of technical terminology
3. Expand for Technical Depth
When you understand the basics but want to go deeper, use the Expand action. The Teaching Assistant adds technical detail, explains implications, explores connections to broader research, and provides the nuanced understanding needed for mastery.
How to use: Highlight text you want to explore in depth, click "Expand"
What you get: Additional technical details, deeper explanations of methodology or theory, discussions of implications and applications, connections to related concepts, and the "why" behind what's stated.
Going deeper with technical details and broader context
4. Ask Custom Questions
When you have a specific question about the highlighted text or document, use the Chat action. Ask for examples, request comparisons, inquire about applications, or pose any question that helps deepen your understanding.
How to use: Highlight relevant text, click "Chat", type your question
What you get: Direct, focused answers to your specific questions, whether you're asking for clarifications, real-world examples, comparisons with other approaches, or connections to your own work.
Example questions you can ask:
- "Can you give me a real-world example of this concept?"
- "How does this compare to [another method/approach]?"
- "What are the practical applications of this?"
- "Why did the authors choose this approach over alternatives?"
- "What are the limitations of this method?"
- "Can you explain this in the context of [your field/domain]?"
- "What would happen if we modified this to [specific change]?"
- "Are there any papers that build on this work?"
Getting answers to your specific questions about the content
5. Chat with Entire Documents
Beyond highlighting specific passages, you can have full conversations about the entire document. Ask for comprehensive summaries, request analysis of the whole paper, explore connections across sections, or discuss the document's contributions and implications. The Teaching Assistant uses the full document as context to provide thorough, document-level understanding.
How to use: Open the chat interface and ask questions about the entire paper without highlighting
What you get: Comprehensive summaries covering all sections, document-level analysis connecting ideas across the paper, answers that draw from throughout the entire document, and discussions of the paper's overall contributions and significance.
Having comprehensive conversations about entire research papers and books
6. Understand Figures and Diagrams
Upload images of figures, charts, equations, or diagrams from papers to get detailed explanations of the visual content. The Teaching Assistant describes what's shown, explains the data or concepts being visualized, and connects the visual to the broader context.
How to use: Upload an image or screenshot of a figure, ask about it
What you get: Detailed descriptions of chart types and visual elements, explanations of trends and patterns, interpretations of what the data shows, and connections to the document's main arguments.
Understanding complex visualizations with detailed explanations
7. Explore Authors and Related Work
When you encounter an author, citation, or concept mentioned briefly in the document, highlight it and ask for more information. The Teaching Assistant can provide comprehensive details about researchers' other publications, related papers, and the broader research landscape.
How to use: Highlight an author's name or citation, ask "What other papers has this author written?"
What you get: Detailed lists of related papers with titles, publication years, venues, and links, plus descriptions of key contributions and how they relate to what you're reading.
Discovering related research and exploring the broader literature
8. Break Down Mathematical Equations
When you encounter complex mathematical equations or formulas, highlight them or upload images to get step-by-step explanations. The Teaching Assistant explains what each variable means, how the equation works, and what it tells you in plain language.
How to use: Highlight equations or upload equation images, click "Explain"
What you get: Line-by-line breakdowns of complex equations, definitions of all variables and operators, explanations of what the math represents conceptually, and insights into why this equation matters.
Step-by-step explanations of mathematical formulas and notation
9. Navigate Unfamiliar Fields
When reading papers outside your primary expertise, the Teaching Assistant helps you get up to speed quickly by explaining field-specific terminology, methodologies, and conventions. It bridges the gap between your background and the new domain.
How to use: Highlight unfamiliar methodology or jargon, use any action or ask questions
What you get: Context about field-specific approaches, explanations of domain conventions, connections to concepts you already know from your field, and guidance on what's standard vs. novel in this area.
Example questions you can ask:
- "What does this term mean in [field name]?"
- "Is this methodology standard in this field?"
- "How does this concept relate to [concept from my field]?"
- "What background knowledge do I need to understand this?"
- "Can you explain this in terms I'd understand from [my field]?"
- "What are the key conventions in this research area?"
- "Is this approach novel or commonly used?"
- "What should I know about this field to read this paper?"
Understanding papers from different disciplines with tailored explanations
What Makes the Teaching Assistant Different?
Instant, Context-Aware Help
Instead of copying text to a chatbot and losing your place, get help exactly where you need it. Highlight any passage and choose the type of help you want: simplification, explanation, expansion, or custom questions, all without interrupting your reading flow.
Designed for Learning, Not Just Answering
The Teaching Assistant doesn't just provide answers. It explains concepts in ways that help you truly understand. It adapts its explanations to match your needs: simpler language when you're struggling, technical depth when you're ready, and focused answers when you have specific questions.
Goes Beyond the Document
When the document mentions concepts, authors, or methods briefly, the Teaching Assistant can provide comprehensive background from its knowledge base or through web search. It never refuses to help just because something isn't in the document. It's here to support your learning journey.
Conversational and Substantive
Unlike generic AI assistants that use overly formal or chatbot-like language, the Teaching Assistant speaks like a knowledgeable colleague. It's direct, substantive, and focused on helping you understand, without unnecessary pleasantries or repetitive phrasing.
Works with Your Spatial Workspace
All explanations appear as cards in SpatialRead's infinite canvas, where you can organize them alongside your PDFs, notes, and connections. Build a visual knowledge network as you learn, rather than losing valuable insights in a linear chat history.
Who Should Use the Teaching Assistant?
Students
Whether you're reading assigned papers for class, working on literature reviews, or learning new concepts for your research, the Teaching Assistant helps you understand complex material at your own pace.
Researchers Exploring New Fields
Get up to speed quickly when reading papers outside your primary expertise. Understand field-specific terminology, methodologies, and conventions without getting lost.
Professionals
Stay current with technical literature in your field, understand research relevant to your work, and learn new concepts efficiently without academic training in the specific domain.
Lifelong Learners
Explore topics that interest you without being intimidated by academic jargon. Get patient, clear explanations that make complex research accessible to curious minds.
Getting Started with the Teaching Assistant
Download SpatialRead
Get the free desktop application for macOS or Windows. All features work with local models via Ollama with no subscription required.
Open a Research Paper or Document
Add a PDF of the paper or document you want to understand. The full document stays on your device. Nothing is uploaded to external servers.
Select the Teaching Assistant Agent
Choose "Teaching Assistant" from the available AI agents. This activates the learning-optimized mode designed to help you understand content.
Highlight and Learn
Select any text in the document and choose from four actions: Simplify (make it clearer), Explain (understand what it means), Expand (get more depth), or Chat (ask custom questions).
Your Documents Stay Private
All documents remain on your device. When using local models (Ollama), everything happens offline with no data transmission. Even with cloud AI providers, you use your own API keys and data goes directly to your chosen provider. We never have access to your documents, questions, or conversations.
This makes the Teaching Assistant suitable for proprietary research, confidential documents, and any content you want to keep private.
Ready to Understand Research Better?
Download SpatialRead and start using the Teaching Assistant to read complex papers with confidence.
Explore Other AI Research Agents
Choose the perfect AI assistant for your research needs. Each agent is specialized to help you in different ways.