Ace
Short answer: add your lecture notes, slides or chapter as sources in a NotebookLM notebook, open the quiz option, and set the topic and difficulty so the questions focus on what you need. Answer every question before revealing it, use Explain on the ones you miss (it points back to your sources), and redo a fresh quiz on the same topic a few days later. One quiz is a check; repeated quizzes spread over days are revision.
What NotebookLM quizzes do
Google added flashcards and quizzes to NotebookLM in September 2025. According to Google's announcement, you can customise the topic and set the difficulty of the study aids, click "explain" for a fuller answer "with citations pointing back to the original source material", and share a study set with friends through a link. Because the questions come from the sources you upload, the quiz stays much closer to your course than a general chatbot does.
"NotebookLM quiz from my notes" has been one of the recurring study searches in our TikTok research over the past week, usually alongside exam-season videos. So here is how to get the most out of it.
How to make a quiz in NotebookLM
- Create a notebook per module or per exam. Mixing unrelated courses in one notebook gives scattered questions.
- Upload your own material. Lecture slides, your notes, the set chapter. The closer the sources are to what your lecturer taught, the closer the questions will be to your exam.
- Choose the quiz option and narrow it. Set a topic ("only lecture 6, membrane transport") rather than quizzing the whole notebook. Start at a lower difficulty for new material and raise it as you go.
- Keep it short. Ten questions you answer properly beat forty you click through.
Menus change, so if a button has moved, look for the flashcards and quiz options among the tools NotebookLM offers for your notebook.
How to use the quiz so it actually helps
The research on testing explains what to do and what to avoid.
- Commit to an answer every time. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found that students who practised recalling material remembered substantially more a week later than students who restudied it. The benefit comes from retrieving, so guessing quickly and clicking on gives you little.
- Say the answer before you see the options. Multiple choice is a recognition task. Larsen, Butler and Roediger (2008) note that tests requiring effortful recall, like short answers, help retention more than recognition tests. Cover the options, answer in your head, then look.
- Use Explain on every miss, then go to the source. Feedback is what turns a wrong answer into learning; the same review stresses that feedback is crucial. Read the cited passage in your own notes, not just the explanation.
- Don't drop the ones you "know" too early. Kornell and Bjork (2008) found that letting students set aside flashcards they thought they knew had small but consistently negative effects on learning. Students are often wrong about what they know.
Limits to know about
- It is still AI. Questions are generated, and an answer key can be wrong or ambiguous. The citations make checking easier; use them.
- It doesn't schedule your reviews. NotebookLM makes a quiz when you ask. Remembering to come back on Thursday is your job.
- School accounts may be restricted. On some school and university Google accounts, an administrator decides whether NotebookLM is turned on.
- A quiz is only one kind of practice. For processes, diagrams and calculations you may want other kinds of questions too; see our guide to good multiple-choice questions for what to look for.
A one-week NotebookLM quiz routine
- Day 1: learn the lecture, then a 10-question quiz on it at low difficulty. Note your misses.
- Day 2: a fresh quiz on the same topic at medium difficulty. Explain every miss.
- Day 4: quiz on two topics together, so you have to work out which idea each question needs.
- Day 7: high difficulty, timed, notes closed. Anything still wrong goes into next week.
That spacing matters as much as the quiz itself; our spaced repetition schedule explains why.
If you want a tool built only for that practice loop, Ace is one option: it turns your PDFs, slides and lecture videos into practice questions, lets you pick the chapters, shows the sentence from your file that backs every answer, and lets you duel a friend on the same questions. Our Ace vs NotebookLM comparison covers when each fits.
Frequently asked questions
Can NotebookLM make a quiz from my notes?
Yes. Add your notes or slides as sources and use the quiz option. You can set the topic and difficulty.
Are NotebookLM quiz answers always right?
Not always. They are generated by AI from your sources. Use Explain and the citations to check any answer that surprises you.
How many NotebookLM quiz questions should I do?
Ten to fifteen per session is plenty if you answer each one properly. Several short quizzes over a week beat one long one.
Can I share a NotebookLM quiz with friends?
Google says study sets can be shared with a link, which makes it easy to quiz each other before an exam.
Sources
- Paul, M., & Dhami, D. (2025, 8 September). 6 ways to use NotebookLM to master any subject. Google.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.
- Larsen, D. P., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). Test-enhanced learning in medical education. Medical Education, 42(10), 959–966.
- Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Optimising self-regulated study: The benefits—and costs—of dropping flashcards. Memory, 16(2), 125–136.
