How to turn a PDF into a quiz

Rereading a chapter feels like studying until you close the book and try to explain it. A quiz built from that chapter shows you which parts you actually know, and the research says the quiz itself teaches you more than the rereading did. This guide walks through turning a PDF into a quiz in Quizbook: what to check before you upload, each step, what the questions look like with a worked example, how grading and the report work, how to check an answer against the source, what to do on the second round, and what to do when something goes wrong.

Why a quiz beats rereading

Roediger and Karpicke had students read a passage and then either reread it or take a recall test on it. A week later, the tested students remembered about half again as much as the rereaders, even though the rereaders had felt more confident at the time [1]. The effect has been replicated across ages, subjects and question types, and a review of ten study techniques rated practice testing as the single most useful [2]. The reason to build a quiz from your PDF is not to find out what you know. It is that answering the questions is the studying.

The second reason is that a quiz built from your file is a quiz on what your course covers, in your lecturer's framing, not a generic one from a question bank.

Before you start

• You need an account. A file is an upload, and guests cannot upload. The Free plan includes it, and signing in is with Google.
• Check the file against your plan. Free takes PDFs up to 100 pages and 50 MB, with three sources per board. Plus takes 500 pages and 250 MB, with five per board. A whole textbook is usually too long for Free; one chapter is fine.
• Scanned PDFs work. Bord reads scanned pages as images, so a photographed textbook or a scan of handwritten notes is fine. Expect it to take a little longer to index.
• Slides, images, audio and video work the same way. This guide says PDF because that is the common case, but a lecture recording or a deck of slides becomes a quiz by the same steps. See Sources for the full list.

The steps

1. Open a board and drop the PDF on itDrag the file onto the canvas. Bord uploads it, checks it for malware, reads and indexes it, and pulls out the figures. A card for the file appears on the board; click it to preview the pages beside the board.
2. Switch to QuizbookPick Quizbook from the mode menu. The same board, a different job: instead of explaining, the AI writes questions.
3. Ask for a quiz, and narrow itType what you want: "Quiz me on chapter 4" or "Ten questions on the causes of the 1929 crash, from the PDF". Naming a chapter, a page range or a topic keeps the questions on what you are revising. You can also select a region of the board, your own notes say, and ask for a quiz on that.
4. Answer on the boardThe quiz lands as a grid of question cards beside a report card, up to twelve at a time. Answer in any order, and change an answer before you submit. Each question has help, skip and retry.
5. SubmitBord grades every answer and fills in the report: a score, feedback on each question, and the areas to focus on. Each question also shows where in the file its answer lives.

A worked example: one chapter, six questions

Say the file is a biology textbook and the chapter is cellular respiration. You ask for six questions on it with a mix of types. A quiz from that chapter looks like this:

Two things to notice. The written and diagram questions are the ones you cannot answer by recognition, and they are the ones that find the gaps. And every question in the set is drawn from the chapter you named, so a wrong answer points at a page you can open.

How grading and the report work

Multiple choice and gap questions are marked right or wrong, with equivalent wording allowed on gaps. Written answers are graded on the reasoning, with a sentence or two of feedback on what was there and what was missing, and a result of correct, partial or incorrect. Diagram questions are graded from what you marked, drew or placed on the board.

The report card beside the quiz shows the score and the focus areas: the topics where the misses cluster. That list is the output that matters. Six questions tell you less about one chapter than the pattern of which two you missed.

Use help when you are close and need a nudge; it gives a hint, not the answer, so you still finish the recall yourself. Use skip when you have nothing; a guess teaches you less than an honest blank, and you can ask for the skipped topic again in the next round. Use retry after feedback to have another go before the grade settles.

Check an answer against the source

Every question shows where its answer lives in your file. Click it and the preview opens at that page, with the passage in view. Do this for every miss, and for any grade you disagree with. Read the passage, decide whether the grade was fair, and then fix your own note on the board if you have one. That last step, correcting a note from the source yourself, is a recall exercise in its own right.

The citation is also your check on the AI. If a question looks wrong, the page settles it in a few seconds rather than a search through the chapter.

The second round, and the third

Ask for another round and Bord targets what you missed, with new questions on the focus areas rather than the same ones again. If a topic still will not stick after two rounds, switch to Tutor and have it taught out loud from the same file, with the explanation drawn on the board, then come back and quiz yourself again.

Then leave it. Come back in three days and ask for a round on the same chapter without rereading first. Spacing retrieval out, rather than massing it, is the other technique with the strongest evidence behind it [2], and a chapter you can quiz well on after a gap is a chapter you know.

When it goes wrong

• The file is too big. Split the PDF by chapter and upload the one you are revising. Most PDF readers can export a page range. Or move to a plan with a larger limit.
• Questions are from the wrong part of the book. Name the chapter or page range in the request. "Chapter 4 only" or "pages 112 to 140" keeps it on target.
• The questions are too easy. Ask for written and diagram questions rather than multiple choice. "Six written questions that need an explanation" produces the kind you cannot answer by recognition.
• A scanned page was read wrongly. Open the citation and check the page. If the scan is poor, a clearer photo of that page as a second source fixes it.
• You disagree with a grade on a written answer. Open the citation, read the passage, and decide. If you were right, fix nothing; if the AI was, fix your note. Either way you have just revised that passage.
• You have hit the weekly allowance. Every plan shares one weekly pool across building, pictures, voice and quizzes, and it resets on Monday. The Free plan doubles the guest pool; Plus is larger again.

Questions