Turn lecture slides into practice questions
When your professor writes the exam, the slides are the syllabus. Here is how to get exam-style questions from them, with or without Quizard, and how to tell whether a question can be trusted.
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A worked example
Beta-blockers. Cardioselective agents such as metoprolol and atenolol act mainly on β1 receptors. Non-selective agents such as propranolol block β1 and β2. β2 blockade in the airways can cause bronchospasm.
A patient with asthma needs a beta-blocker. Why would propranolol be a poor choice?
- It also blocks β2 receptors in the airways, which can cause bronchospasm.
- It acts only on β1 receptors
- It is a cardioselective agent
- It has no effect on β2 receptors
We wrote this example to show what good output looks like. Real results depend on your slides, so always check them against your own course.
What makes a practice question worth doing
A good question makes you retrieve or apply something from the slide, and has one answer the slide can defend. A weak one asks you to recognise a sentence you have just read. Retrieval is the point: testing yourself tends to help later recall more than rereading does, so a question that gives itself away costs you time and teaches you little.
Mix the question types
Match the types to how your exam is written. Multiple choice trains telling similar ideas apart, short answer forces real recall, and a clinical or applied scenario tests whether you can use a fact. If past papers exist, copy their style and verbs, because “identify” and “justify” ask for different things.
Keep questions tied to their slide
Note the slide number beside each question. When you get one wrong you can go straight back to the source, and when a question looks odd you can check it in seconds. It also shows you the gaps: slides with no questions are slides you have not practised.
A prompt you can use with any AI assistant
Using only the attached slides, write 10 exam-style questions: 6 multiple choice with 4 options, 2 short answer and 2 applied scenarios. Test understanding, not recognition. After each question give the answer, a one-sentence explanation, and the slide number it came from, quoting the line that supports it. If the slides do not support a question, do not write it.
Check the result
- Open the slide it cites. Does the slide really say this?
- Could someone answer without knowing the topic, for example from the wording of the options?
- Is exactly one option defensible?
- Does it test what your professor stressed, or a side remark?
- Is any detail in the answer missing from your slides? Then check it in your textbook before you trust it.
What Quizard does here
- Quizard writes multiple choice, true or false, short answer and essay questions from your files, and each one links to the slide it came from.
- Every item is matched back to a passage on a slide, and anything that cannot be matched stays out of practice until you edit or delete it.
- The questions you miss come back in a daily session, and on Plus a slide map shows which slides are practised, weak or not yet covered.
When this is not the right approach. If your exam is a national or board exam with a large, well-known question bank, use that bank first. Questions from your own slides suit classes where the school writes the exam.
Try it on one of your lectures