# How to Turn Lecture Slides and Notes Into a Study Plan

> Lecture slides are a summary for the lecturer, not a course for you. How to turn slides, notes and PDFs into levels you can actually study, revise and be tested on before the exam.

Slides are written to remind the lecturer what to say. Read on their own, they skip the explanations, jump between ideas and assume you were listening at exactly the right moment. That is why re-reading them the week before an exam feels productive and changes so little.

The fix is to turn them into something built for learning: ordered levels, each with a clear goal, explained in full, and checked.

## Step by step

1. **Gather everything for one module.** Slides, your own notes, the reading list, past papers and the official syllabus if there is one. The syllabus matters most: it says what can be examined.
2. **List the topics, not the slides.** Go through the material and write each distinct idea once. Twenty slides are often four topics.
3. **Order them by dependency.** Put each topic after the ones it relies on. In most subjects the lecture order is close, but not always.
4. **Group them into levels.** Two to four related ideas per level. A level should take one or two study sessions.
5. **Fill the gaps.** For every topic the slides only name, find the full explanation in the reading or a textbook. This is where most of the learning happens.
6. **End every level with a check.** Five to ten questions that cover the level, answered from memory. Keep the ones you miss for revision.
7. **Schedule revision.** Revisit each level after one day, one week and one month. See [Active recall and flashcards](/learn/active-recall-flashcards/).

## What a good level looks like

| Part | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| Goal | One sentence: what you can do or explain after this level |
| Lessons | Each idea explained in full, with a worked example |
| Links | How this level connects to the one before it |
| Check | Questions answered from memory, not recognised from a list |
| Flashcards | The facts and definitions worth keeping |

## Common traps

- **Highlighting instead of explaining.** Colour on a slide is not understanding. Write the explanation in your own words.
- **Studying in lecture order no matter what.** If week 6 depends on week 2, study week 2 properly first.
- **Leaving the check until the exam.** Test yourself at the end of every level, while there is still time to fix a gap.
- **Treating every slide as equal.** The syllabus and past papers tell you what carries marks.

## Doing this with LoWisa

In the LoWisa app, **Master any topic** does the ordering for you. Describe the module, or add your lecture slides, notes, PDFs and pictures, and the app builds your lessons: as many levels as the topic needs, from the foundations to advanced, with a checkpoint and flashcards at the end of every level. You can listen to any level as a two-host episode in [Insight mode](/help/insight-mode/) on the way to class. The app is on Google Play and the App Store.

Read [Master any topic](/help/master-any-topic/) for how to add your files and what to expect.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why does re-reading lecture slides not work?

Slides are a summary written for the lecturer. Re-reading them builds familiarity, not recall. Turning them into explained levels and testing yourself from memory is what makes material stick.

### How many topics should one study session cover?

Two to four related ideas. That is small enough to explain fully and test yourself on in one or two sessions.

### Can an app turn my lecture slides into lessons?

Yes. In the LoWisa app, Master any topic takes slides, notes, PDFs or pictures and builds ordered levels with lessons, a checkpoint and flashcards for each level.

## Turn your slides into levels

Add a module's slides and notes to Master any topic and study it level by level.

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Source: https://lowisa.dev/learn/study-from-lecture-slides/ · Updated 2026-09-27