Turn a lecture into a quiz

How many questions you get

The number depends on how much was said, measured in the transcript rather than in minutes, because a rambling hour can hold less than a dense half hour.

Most lectures land in the last row. Of 386 recordings students transcribed in Laxu AI, our study app, the median ran 39.5 minutes and 41% ran 45 minutes or more (the full breakdown is in our laptop recording guide).

What makes the questions fair

• The wrong answers come from the lecture too. Each wrong option is a real term, value or claim from elsewhere in the same lecture, often the thing students mix this one up with. You cannot rule options out just because they sound unrelated.
• All four options look alike. They are the same kind of answer and about the same length, so the longest option is not a giveaway, and the right answer moves around.
• Questions stand on their own. No “according to the speaker” or “what phrase was repeated”. Each question tests the subject, the way an exam would.
• Same language as the lecture. A lecture given in Spanish gets a quiz in Spanish.

Why a quiz works better than rereading

Pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it more than reading it again. In a well-known experiment, students who tested themselves on a passage remembered 61% of it a week later, against 40% for students who spent the same time rereading it (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). The quiz gives you that practice for every lecture without writing a single question yourself.

How to use it

1. Take it the same day. Answer each question before you look at the notes.
2. Read the misses. When you pick a wrong option, the right one is shown straight away. Find that part in the notes.
3. Ask the tutor about what you missed. It answers from that lecture only.
4. Retake it before the exam. Your score at the end tells you whether the lecture has stuck.

A study week with the quiz

One way to use it across a week, for a lecture on Monday:

The times are rough planning figures for a quiz of about 25 questions, not measurements. The point is the spacing: coming back to a lecture a few days later, and answering before you reread.

Limits

• The quiz is multiple choice only, four options per question. There are no written-answer questions.
• You cannot edit the questions on the website yet.
• A question is only as good as the transcript. If a term was misheard, the question can carry the mistake, so check against your slides when an answer surprises you.
• It is a quiz, not a flashcard deck: there is no spaced review schedule.