How to make practice questions from a PDF with Filmina (and by hand)

If you're looking up how to make practice questions from a PDF, here's the short answer: pull questions of different kinds out of each topic (define, compare, apply to a case, explain in your own words), answer them without looking, check them against the PDF and come back to the ones you missed a few days later. You can do it by hand or with a tool that writes them for you, but what gets you ready for the exam isn't having the questions. It's answering them.

That last part matters more than it sounds. Rereading a PDF feels like knowing it, because everything looks familiar. Answering without looking shows what you actually know, and it's also what makes you remember it: that's active recall, one of the best-studied effects in how people learn.

In this post I'll go through which kinds of questions are worth making, how to do it by hand, and how it works in Filmina with Practice, step by step, using a sample lecture from Principles of Management: the one on motivation theories, with Maslow, Herzberg and McClelland across twenty-five slides.

Why practice with questions instead of rereading

When you reread, you recognize. When someone asks you, you have to recall. Those are two different things, and the exam wants the second one. That's how someone who read the motivation lecture three times can still freeze on "how do hygiene factors differ from motivators?": the idea sounds familiar, but they've never pulled it out of memory.

Practicing with questions does three things:

• Shows you what you don't know. A question you miss today is one you won't miss on the exam, if you come back to it.
• Makes it stick. Every time you pull something from memory, you lock it in. I wrote more about this in active recall.
• Gets you used to the format. If the exam is case questions or essays, practicing only with definitions leaves you halfway there.

Which kinds of questions to pull from a PDF

Not every question is equally useful. With the motivation lecture as the example, you want a few levels:

1. Recognize. True or false, multiple choice, fill in the missing word. "Maslow's pyramid puts self-actualization at the base: true or false?" They're quick and good for warming up.
2. Understand. Put things in order, pick all that apply, a short open question. "Order Maslow's needs from most basic to highest."
3. Apply. A case. "A company raises salaries and people are still unmotivated. What would Herzberg say?" This is the type that shows up most on management and business exams, and the one people practice least.
4. Master. Spot the error in a statement, pick the strongest argument, explain it to someone who missed class. "Explain to a classmate why Herzberg isn't just Maslow with different labels."

If you only write first-level questions, you'll do fine on a multiple-choice midterm and badly on an essay final. Good practice climbs from recognizing to applying.

How to do it by hand

Without any app, the method goes like this:

1. Read a section of the PDF and close it. Don't write questions with the text in front of you, or you'll just copy its sentences.
2. Write three or four questions per topic, at different levels. One definition, one comparison, one case.
3. The next day, answer them without looking. On paper or out loud, in full.
4. Check against the PDF and mark each one: right, half right, wrong.
5. Come back to the ones you missed in a few days, and to the ones you got right, later on.

It works, and writing the questions is already studying. The problem is time: for a course with fifteen lectures that's hundreds of questions, and almost nobody gets around to writing cases. If your professor shares past exams, use them as a model for the kind of question to expect, like I described in how to use past papers.

How it works in Filmina, step by step

In Filmina, a web app that explains your lecture slides out loud, this is called Practice: it builds the questions from your material, quizzes you and remembers what you got wrong. Here's how I'd do it with the motivation lecture:

1. Upload the PDF to its space. Each course is a space, so the lecture PDF goes into the Principles of Management one. If you went through it with Mina first, even better: the questions start with the slides you asked her about.
2. Open Practice. It's in the sidebar on the left, and on a phone it's one of the four tabs at the bottom.
3. Pick the type. There are eight cards: Mixed, Flashcards, Choices, Match concepts, Fill the gap, Cases, In your words and Mock exam. Above them, Best for today recommends one and tells you why. For the motivation lecture, I'd go with Cases.
4. Pick what from. Under What do you want to practice? there's The whole subject, Choose (you tick the files, and each one shows how far you've studied it), What the exam covers if you have a study plan, What you got wrong and The ones you saved.
5. Pick how long. About 5 minutes, up to 15 or about 30, which means 8, 20 or 40 questions. Tapping a time starts it.

Practice also asks about what you haven't studied yet: it reads that part before asking, so the first wait is longer. Meanwhile, Play while you wait shows up with a few small games.

What the questions and feedback look like

You get one question at a time. Before you see whether you were right, it asks How sure are you?, with Not much, Somewhat or Very sure, because once you've seen the answer, everyone was sure. If you have no idea, there's I don't know, which beats guessing.

Feedback is its own step: your answer stays large in the color of how it went, with a heading on top like Right!, Almost or Not that one, plus the why. On the explain-in-your-own-words questions, which you can type or dictate, it tells you how many ideas you covered ("You covered 2 of 3 ideas") and what you left out. If it didn't go well, Explain more takes that question to Mina without pulling you out of the practice.

At the end you get a score from 0 to 100 that weighs harder questions more, the level you reached (from You recognize the concepts to You've got them down) and the list of what you got wrong, with your answer and the right one. It's for tracking how you're doing from one round to the next, not for passing.

What you missed comes back, plus the mock exam

Each question sits in one of three boxes. What you got wrong comes back the next day; what you got right once, in three days; what you got right twice in a row, in a week. If you get it right while saying you weren't sure, it doesn't move up a box. Getting it right while unsure isn't knowing it, and Filmina treats it that way.

During finals week, the Mock exam asks about everything, with a timer, and doesn't show you how you did until the end, like the real thing. It's the closest you'll get to exam day, and it takes a lot of the nerves out ahead of time.

The full details are in Practice and review.

What to know before you use it

• It needs a connection and an account. The questions and the feedback happen in the cloud.
• The free plan has a cap. On Free you get one practice per file each month, and Practice, which pulls files together, counts as one a month per space. Picking up one you left halfway doesn't count. Pro has no cap; prices are on the home page.
• A scanned deck reads worse. Filmina recognizes the text in the image, but it can slip, especially on small print. If you have the original file, upload that.
• A question can come out wrong. A language model writes them. If one is badly worded or the answer isn't right, tap This question is wrong: it won't come up again and it doesn't count toward your score.

Frequently asked questions

How do I make practice questions from a PDF?

Read a section, close the PDF and write three or four questions per topic at different levels: a definition, a comparison and a case. The next day, answer them without looking, check against the PDF and come back to the ones you missed a few days later.

Is there an AI that makes quiz questions from a PDF?

Yes. Filmina builds them from your material with Practice, in eight types from flashcards to a timed mock exam, checks your answers and brings back what you got wrong. You can also ask a general chatbot, but it won't keep track of what you missed.

What kind of practice questions should I use?

A mix of levels: recognize (true or false, multiple choice), understand (ordering, explaining), apply (cases) and master (spotting the error, explaining it to someone else). If your exam is case-based or essay-based, focus on those.

How often should I practice with questions?

A short session most days beats one long session the night before. Go back to what you missed the next day, and space out what you already know further and further.