How to make practice questions from your lecture notes
Rereading notes feels productive, but answering questions about them is what makes them stick. Here is a way to write good questions in about ten minutes per lecture.
Why questions beat rereading
Pulling an answer out of your memory strengthens it more than looking at it again. Psychologists call this the testing effect. In one well-known study, students who practised recalling a text remembered more of it a week later than students who spent the same time rereading it (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). The catch is that the questions have to be good: a question you can answer by recognising a phrase tests almost nothing.
Step 1: mark the lines worth asking about
Go through the notes once and mark each line that holds one idea you'd need on an exam: a definition, a cause and its effect, a number with its unit, a step in a process, or a comparison. Skip examples the lecturer used only to illustrate; ask about the idea behind them instead.
Step 2: write one question per marked line
Turn each line into a question whose answer is in that line and nowhere else. Keep a note of which line it came from. When you get it wrong later, that line is what you reread.
| Your note | A weak question | A better question |
|---|---|---|
| In the light-dependent reactions, water is split and oxygen is released. | True or false: oxygen is released. | What is released when water is split in the light-dependent reactions? |
| Inflation erodes the real value of fixed-rate debt. | Inflation affects debt. Discuss. | Why does inflation help a borrower with a fixed-rate loan? |
| The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War. | When was 1648? | Which treaty ended the Thirty Years' War, and in what year? |
Step 3: if it's multiple choice, make the wrong answers believable
Wrong options should be mistakes a classmate could really make: a related term, the opposite effect, a number off by a common slip. Avoid "all of the above", options that differ only in length, and a right answer that's obviously the most detailed. If you can pick the answer without knowing the material, rewrite it.
Step 4: check every answer against the notes
This is the step people skip, and it's where wrong questions come from. Cover the answer, answer it yourself from memory, then check it against the line you marked. If the line doesn't fully support the answer, change the question or drop it.
Step 5: answer them again, spaced out
Answer the set the next day, then a few days later, then a week after that. Put every question you miss in a separate list and start the next session with it. Spacing the sessions out matters as much as doing them; see how to space your reviews.
Mistakes to avoid
- Questions that copy a sentence with one word blanked out. They test recognition, not understanding.
- Two ideas in one question. If you get it half right, you won't know which half to review.
- Questions about the lecturer's examples instead of the idea they illustrated.
- Answers you never checked against the source.
Doing this with Operations Hub
The hub does steps 1 to 4 for you. Drop in a lecture's notes and it writes questions from them, each one quoting the line it came from. Every answer is then checked by a second reader that never saw the answer key, and a question that fails any check is thrown out. Missed questions go to the Mistake book, and flash cards come back on a schedule, which covers step 5. See exactly how it checks.
Sources
Roediger, H. L., and Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249 to 255.