How to make a study guide from lecture slides

Slides are made to be talked over. In the lecture, your teacher explains each bullet, adds the example and says which parts will be on the exam. Weeks later, alone with 40 slides, you have only the bullets. Some slides are a single photo. Some say "Discussion". It is hard to tell what matters.

A good study guide solves that. This guide shows a simple way to build one from a deck, what to put in it, how to check it, and how to use it so it actually helps you learn.

Why not just reread the slides?

Rereading feels like studying. The slides look familiar, so you feel you know them. But familiar is not the same as remembered.

In 2013, five researchers reviewed the evidence on ten common study techniques for the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest (Dunlosky et al., 2013). They rated two techniques as high utility: practice testing (testing yourself) and distributed practice (spreading study over several sessions). They rated rereading, highlighting and summarizing as low utility.

So the point of a study guide is not to make something nicer to reread. It is to sort the material into a shape you can test yourself on, session after session. Our guide on practice questions and active recall covers the testing part in detail.

Before you start: gather what you have

Collect these before you write anything:

• The deck itself. The PowerPoint file (PPTX) is better than a printout. It keeps the speaker notes, and the text is easy to copy and search.
• Speaker notes. Many lecturers put the real explanation in the notes under each slide. Check them.
• The reading set for that week, if there is one.
• Your own lecture notes, even if they are messy.
• The learning outcomes from the course outline ("By the end of this week you should be able to..."). These are the closest thing you have to a list of exam topics.
• Past papers or practice questions, if your course shares them.

Step 1: Map the deck into topics

Skim the whole deck once, quickly, before you write. You are looking for its structure, not its details.

• Find the agenda or outline slide. It usually lists the topics in order.
• Find the section divider slides: big title, little text.
• Find the summary slide at the end, if there is one. It often says what the lecturer thinks matters most.

Group the slides into topics. A 40-slide lecture usually has between four and eight. Write them down as headings, in the order the lecture covers them, and note the slide range for each one: "Causes of inflation (slides 6 to 14)".

Name each section after the topic itself, not "Slides 6 to 14". You will remember a name. You will not remember a slide range.

Step 2: Write what you must know for each topic

Under each heading, write three to six points. Each point should be something you could be asked about. For each one:

• Explain it in your own words. Do not copy the bullet. If you can't explain it, that is the first thing to go back and learn.
• Put each key term in bold, followed by a plain-English meaning: "Opportunity cost: what you give up when you choose one option over another."
• Keep the specifics. Examples, numbers, formulas, names, dates and steps in a process are what exam questions are made of. Copy these carefully.
• Add the slide number at the end: "(slide 9)".

Here is the shape of one section:

Step 3: Fill the gaps the slides leave

Some slides will not make sense on their own. Typical gaps:

• A chart or photo with no words. The slide shows something the lecturer explained out loud. Check the speaker notes, the reading and your own notes.
• A one-word bullet. "Elasticity." Elasticity of what, and why does it matter here?
• A slide that says "example" or "discussion". The example was in the room. Ask a classmate, or check the recording if there is one.

When you fill a gap from somewhere other than the slides, say so: "(reading, p. 112)" or "(my notes)". Later, when two sources disagree, you will know which one to trust. If nothing explains a slide, write it down as a question for your lecturer or tutor. That is a better use of office hours than any other.

Step 4: Add a key terms list

After the topic sections, list every key term with a one-line meaning. Keep it short: term, colon, meaning.

If you study in a second language, add a column for the word in your own language. But learn the term in the language of the exam. That is the word the question will use.

Step 5: Write "remember for the exam"

Finish with five to eight short points that are most likely to be tested. Good places to look:

• The learning outcomes for the week.
• Anything the lecturer said more than once, or said "this will be on the exam" about.
• The summary slide.
• Topics that come up in past papers.

Keep this list short. If everything is important, nothing is.

Step 6: Turn it into questions

Now use the guide. For each section, write two or three questions it answers. Mix them up:

• "What is opportunity cost?" (a definition)
• "Why does a price rise lower demand for most goods?" (an explanation)
• "Which of these is an example of a fixed cost?" (applying the idea)

Close the guide and answer them, in writing or out loud. Then open it and check. The questions you get wrong tell you what to study next.

Check it against the slides

A study guide with a mistake in it is worse than no study guide: you will learn the mistake. This is true whether you wrote it, a classmate wrote it or an AI tool wrote it. So check.

Pick five points at random. Open the slide each one cites and read it. Look for these common errors:

1. A number copied wrong. A date, a percentage, a unit, a decimal point.
2. A missing "not". "Is not caused by" becomes "is caused by" surprisingly often.
3. Cause and effect reversed. "A leads to B" turned into "B leads to A".
4. Two slides merged. An idea from slide 12 attached to a term from slide 13.
5. Something that isn't on the slide at all. A fact from general knowledge that may be true, but is not what your course taught. Exams mark against the course.

If more than one of your five points has a problem, check the rest of the guide too.

What to put in, what to leave out

If you study in a second language

Many students study in English when it is not their first language. A few things help:

• Write the explanations in whichever language you understand best. Understanding comes first.
• Keep key terms in the language of the exam, with your own translation beside them.
• Use short sentences. One idea each. If you can't say an idea simply, you probably don't understand it yet.
• Read the original slide when you check. A translation can change the meaning of a technical word.

Doing it with FileAI

FileAI is a tool that reads your files and writes from them. Upload a PowerPoint (PPTX) or a PDF with selectable text, press Study guide, and it writes one with the same structure as this guide:

• Overview: two or three sentences on what the lecture covers.
• One section per topic, in the order of the deck, with key terms in bold and the examples, numbers and dates that matter.
• Key terms: a short list with a one-line meaning each.
• Remember for the exam: five to eight points most likely to be tested.

Every point ends with a slide number. Click it and the slide opens with the cited words highlighted, so checking takes seconds instead of minutes. FileAI reads the speaker notes too.

Your language. The Study guide button writes in the language of your slides. If you type your request instead ("make a study guide for this lecture"), you can write it in the language you know best, and the answer comes back in that language. Turn on Simpler English for short sentences and common words. The quoted slide text always stays as it is on the slide, so you can compare.

What it can't do. FileAI writes only from the text in your files. It cannot see what a chart or photo shows unless the slide or its notes say it in words. It does not read scanned PDFs yet. And it can be wrong. That is why every point links to its slide: check the points you will rely on, the same way as in the checklist above.

You can see a study guide made from a real lecture deck, without an account, on the study guide from lecture slides page. The demo shows how the numbered sources work on a sample document. The free plan needs no card, and Pro adds more files and questions each month.

A note on school rules. A study guide is for your own learning. If you plan to hand in anything a tool wrote, check your school's rules on AI first.

Sources

• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.
• Association for Psychological Science, Which study strategies make the grade? (a plain-English summary of the review above)