Prepare for an exam from a semester of lecture recordings

The short answer

Put each lecture of the course into SozAI as its own recording. Every one gets notes, up to 30 flashcards and a quiz of 5 to 15 questions. The cards go into a review queue that shows what's due today, with an optional reminder on your phone, and the examiner asks you questions you answer aloud or in text, then grades them. Quizzes and flashcards don't use transcription minutes; transcribing does, with 30 minutes free once and Premium from $4.99 a week. Each quiz and deck covers one recording, so there is no single quiz for the whole semester.

Start from the exam, not from the recordings

List the topics the exam covers (the syllabus and past papers have them) and match each one to a lecture. A recording of a topic that won't be examined can wait. If the pile is a whole term and the exam is close, our article on turning a semester of recordings into notes covers that triage in detail.

Then work through the lectures that matter in this order:

1. Make a folder for the course (the apps and the web share it) and put every lecture in it. For a lecture you missed, upload the lecture capture file where your university lets you download it, or paste a YouTube link for an open course.
2. Read each lecture's notes once, starting with Likely to be asked. That block lists what the notes mark as probable exam material.
3. Take the quiz for that lecture. When you get one wrong, open Why: the explanation quotes the lecture, and the quote's time opens the transcript at that moment. On the result screen, tap Add mistakes to flashcards.
4. Review every day. Review shows the cards due today across your decks. Rate each card Again, Hard, Good or Easy; cards you know come back later and cards you miss come back sooner.
5. Turn on review reminders and pick a time and days (every day, weekdays or weekends). The reminder arrives only on days when something is due.
6. In the last few days, use the examiner on the lectures you're least sure of.

Why a quiz beats another read of the notes

Rereading feels like progress because the text looks familiar. Familiar is not the same as remembered. A question you can't answer shows you the gap while there is still time to close it, and a card you keep rating Again tells you where the next hour should go.

Know what a quiz can't do. It has at most 15 questions, so for an hour-long lecture it samples the main points rather than every minute. Make a new quiz from the same recording later and the questions will be different; that is limited to three new quizzes per recording in 24 hours, and retaking an existing one is always open.

What each tool does, and its limits

Generation has daily limits as well, and the app tells you when you reach one.

Practising for an oral exam

The examiner is a chat that quizzes you. Open a recording's notes and choose Examiner. It prepares its questions, usually in under a minute, can read each one aloud, and listens when you tap to answer; you can type instead. Each answer gets a verdict, and you see a score at the end. Take it again starts a new round.

It is most useful for subjects where you have to explain, not pick. Saying an answer out loud exposes the half-understood parts that a multiple-choice question lets you guess past. Voice answers need microphone and speech recognition access, and for some languages the device has no voice input, so you type. The examiner is in every SozAI app, but not on the web.

To ask something that spans several lectures, use the assistant in the app: it looks through your recent recordings for the answer.

A mock exam on paper

Some exams are still written by hand, and a printed test is closer to that than an app. Export the lecture transcript as TXT, paste it into the free quiz generator, and choose 5, 10 or 20 questions: multiple choice, true or false, short answer or a mix. It prints the test with the answer key on a separate page. Its questions come from free AI models, so read them before you rely on them.

When SozAI is not the right tool

• The exam is mostly problem solving. A quiz from a recording checks what the lecturer said; past papers and problem sets train the method.
• You want one cumulative test of the whole course. Each quiz and deck belongs to one recording.
• You keep all your cards in Anki. SozAI decks stay in SozAI; the free flashcard generator exports a CSV for Anki from a pasted transcript.
• The recordings are barely audible. Questions built on a bad transcript repeat its mistakes, so check the text first.

The rest of the study loop is on SozAI for students, and the review schedule is explained on quizzes and flashcards. Lectures with slides: slides and lecture.