Every week another set of lecture slides goes up on your university's learning platform, and your January exams already have their dates. You want to turn each PowerPoint into flashcards before the folder gets out of hand. The catch is that the slides hold what was on the screen, not what your lecturer said while it was up there.
To turn a PowerPoint into flashcards, upload it to a course in Studyflash, which also makes a summary, a mind map and quizzes from the slides. Record the lecture as well, and what was said sits right next to what was shown.
How to study lecture slides with Studyflash
Start with this week's slides.
- Make a course for the module and upload the PowerPoint, or the PDF if that's what you downloaded. Photos of your handwritten notes and text you paste in can go in alongside them.
- Generate a summary to read first, as a general overview or in depth. Before it's made, you set its length, how complex it gets, its format and whether it ends with reflection questions.
- Make flashcards and a quiz from the same slides. You choose how many cards, how detailed they are, which card types and the language.
- Record next week's lecture on your laptop or phone, so the course has what your lecturer said too.
- Put your exam date on the course. You get a countdown and a suggested number of new cards to learn each day.
Read your slides as a summary or a mind map
Slides are written to be talked over, so on their own they read like a list of headings. The summary turns them into text you can follow from top to bottom. Take the general overview when you need the shape of a topic, and the in-depth version when you're revising it properly. It's fully editable, so you can add the example your lecturer kept coming back to or cut what you already know.
The mind map lays the same slides out as a theme with its topics and subtopics branching off. Click a concept, say price elasticity in an economics module, and an explanation opens with links to the flashcards on it. The summary and the mind map are both built to cover every slide, the dull ones in the middle included.
Diagram slides work too. Screenshot one, upload the image, and Studyflash makes image occlusion cards from it, with the labels hidden for you to recall.
What your slides leave out
A lot of a lecture happens between the slides. Your lecturer puts up a graph, spends ten minutes on why one curve shifts and the other stays put, and mentions which case tends to come up in the exam. The slide itself still just shows a graph.
Record the lecture on your laptop or phone and Studyflash transcribes it, then makes a summary, cards and a quiz from what was said. They sit in the same course as that week's slides. If you're not sure recording is allowed, ask your lecturer first.
When a slide still doesn't make sense, ask Max, Studyflash's AI tutor. He has read your slides, your cards and everything else in your courses. His answers come with citations, so you can see where each point comes from. He leads you to the answer step by step, unless you ask him for the answer directly.
From the slides to the January exams
Over the Christmas break you're revising a whole term of slides at once. By then you have flashcards from each week's PowerPoint. Each card comes back for review based on how well you remembered it last time. The evening before the exam, cram mode takes you through every card in the deck.
Each course also has a study plan that takes you through it topic by topic until you've mastered it. It opens with an overview, then gives each topic its cards and quiz and shows how well you know it. You choose the goal: a pass or the top grade. The plan suggests an order for the topics, but you don't have to follow it.
The last step is a mock exam, timed and graded. Upload old exams from your module and it follows their structure; if you don't have any, you set the number of questions, the time limit and the question types. You can sit one whenever you like, as often as you like.
Studyflash or writing it up yourself
| Studyflash | Writing it up yourself | |
|---|---|---|
| What do I get from my slides? | A summary, a mind map, cards and quizzes, each set your way | A summary and a deck of cards, typed up as two separate jobs |
| What about what the lecturer said? | The recorded lecture becomes a summary, cards and a quiz | As much as your notes caught |
| How do I get to the exam? | A study plan to mastery, and mock exams with Premium | A plan you make yourself, with reviews if your card app schedules them |
| What does it cost? | Nothing to start, and the free plan includes cards, quizzes, spaced repetition and Max | Nothing |
| Where does it work? | Web, iPhone, iPad and Android in 27 languages, decks offline on your phone | Wherever your notebook or card app goes |
| Best for | A term's worth of lecture slides and an exam date | A single slide you want in your own words |
Features checked on 24 September 2026. Plans are priced per country and shown at checkout.
Questions students ask
Studyflash makes flashcards directly from the PowerPoint file, and a PDF of the same slides works just as well. Either way, you choose how many cards you get and which card types.
No. The summary covers what's in the slides, and a lecture is more than that. Record it, or add your own notes from it, and you have that part as well.
Studyflash makes image occlusion cards from a screenshot of the diagram: the labels are hidden and you recall each one. These cards suit anatomy drawings, process charts and anything else that's mostly labels.
Yes, with no credit card and no ads. The free plan includes flashcards, quizzes, spaced repetition and unlimited chat with Max, Studyflash's AI tutor, plus a monthly allowance for creating new cards, quizzes and summaries with AI. With Premium, creating with AI is unlimited, and you also get mock exams, podcasts and unlimited study groups.
For a whole term of slides, Studyflash is the better choice. Writing it up yourself means typing each summary line and each card from the slide in front of you, and the lecture only gets in if your notes caught it. Studyflash works through every slide for you, and a recording brings in what was said. If you like having your own wording, you keep it: the summary is yours to edit, and your own notes can go in with the slides.
Studyflash keeps your slides and cards in your course after the exam. If next term's module builds on this one, the cards and summaries are still there to go back to.