Use AI to Create Lecture Slides and a Quiz From a PDF

January 3, 2024

Use AI to Create Lecture Slides and a Quiz From a PDF

Can AI make lecture slides? Yes. Teachers and lecturers have been using PPTX.ai to do it since we first added PDFs. But slides are only half a lecture. The other half is finding out whether anyone followed, and usually you only find out at the exam.

So PPTX.ai now writes the quiz along with the slides. You attach a reading. You get back a lecture with questions in the places where they check understanding. Your students answer on their phones as you go, and you see the results before you move on.

An example: one chapter of a textbook

MIT's OpenCourseWare publishes the 547-page book for its course Computational Biology: Genomes, Networks, Evolution. You could give PPTX.ai the whole book, but you'd get a summary of everything and detail on nothing.

Give it the part you're teaching instead. We saved the nine pages of section 1.4, "Crash Course in Molecular Biology", as their own PDF and started a new presentation from it with:

  • Slides: 6
  • Quiz questions: 4
  • Polls: 1
  • Focus: "The central dogma, transcription and mRNA, for a first-year class with no biology background"

The focus matters most. It tells the assistant what to cover and who it's for. The same nine pages would make a very different lecture for second-year biochemists.

Questions that check the right thing

A quiz is more than multiple choice. These are the kinds of question PPTX.ai can write, with examples from that chapter:

  • Multiple choice: "Which molecule carries the code from DNA to the ribosome?" (mRNA)
  • True or false: "In the central dogma, information flows from protein back to DNA." (False)
  • Put in order: DNA, mRNA, protein. Good for any process with steps.
  • Match the pairs: transcription with "DNA to RNA", translation with "RNA to protein".
  • A typed answer: "Which enzyme builds RNA from a DNA template?" You can list other answers you'll accept, such as "RNA pol".
  • A number: "How many bases make up one codon?" (3). For answers that are measured or estimated, you can accept ones that are close enough.

If a question isn't quite right, open it and fix it yourself. You can change the wording, the answers or which answer is correct, and editing doesn't use any credits. Or ask the assistant: "Make question two harder," or "Add a quiz question after slide four on what a codon is."

Running it in the room

When you're ready to teach, open the lobby. A QR code appears on the screen. Students scan it with their phone camera, sign in with their email and join. The first time, they type a short code we email them. Nothing needs to be installed.

One thing to plan for: once you press Start presentation, nobody new can join. So put the lobby up while people are finding their seats.

Then teach as normal. When you reach a quiz question, students answer on their phones and you see how many have answered. When you reveal it, the right answer appears on the big screen and on every phone, and each student sees whether they got it.

If half the room got it wrong, you know before you build the next idea on top of it.

Scored or not: you choose

Not every class wants a leaderboard. In the presentation's Results settings, choose how quiz results are shown:

  • The answer when you reveal it, then the standings. Good for a review session or a bit of friendly competition.
  • All together at the end, then the final standings. The lecture keeps moving, and you go over the answers in one place.
  • Not shown, with no standings. For a low-stakes check where nobody is ranked.

Polls have their own setting, so a "How confident do you feel about this?" slider can fill in live even while the quiz stays quiet.

Ideas for your next class

  • Check the reading first. Set slides to zero and ask for six quiz questions on the assigned PDF. Open the lesson with them, and you'll know straight away who read it.
  • One question after each hard idea. It costs you a minute, and it tells you whether to move on.
  • End with a word cloud. "In one word, what was the hardest part today?" The answers tell you where to start next lesson.
  • Use speaker notes for yourself. They show on your screen under the slide, and never on your students' phones.

Good to know

  • Generating from a PDF costs 10 credits, and the PDF can be up to 20 MB. A chapter gives a better lecture than a whole book, and costs the same.
  • Editing slides and questions yourself, presenting, and your students' answers don't use any credits.
  • PPTX.ai doesn't make PowerPoint files. You build the lecture and present it from your browser. We wrote a fuller guide to turning a PDF into a presentation, and a post on how polls and quizzes work.

Already using a quiz tool in class? Here's how PPTX.ai compares with Kahoot!.

Open the studio and start with your next reading.

We updated this post in October 2026 for the current version of PPTX.ai.