How Alma turns your lecture PDFs and notes into quizzes, slides and mind maps
By Roupen Odabashian, MD, FRCPC · Published · 9 min read
How we write and check articles: Editorial Policy.
Disclosure: Alma publishes this article and makes one of the study tools it discusses.
How Alma turns your lecture PDFs and notes into quizzes, slides and mind maps
In Alma, the Learning Hub is where a learner uploads their own lectures, PDFs, slides, images or pasted text into a notebook, then asks Alma to write an exam-style quiz, build an editable lecture slide deck, or draw a mind map from those sources. This guide walks through each step as the product works on October 20, 2026, including the options, the limits and what the quizzes are not. Alma is a study tool: quiz questions are AI-written from your own material, never copied from real exams, and nothing here predicts a score or guarantees a pass.
What is the Alma Learning Hub?
The Learning Hub is the first item in Alma's left navigation and the page a new learner lands on after sign-in. It is titled "Recent notebooks" and shows a "Create new notebook" card. A notebook here is a set of sources the learner uploaded. Inside a notebook there is a Sources panel on the left, where the learner ticks which sources to use, previews a source, or adds more with "Add source". Four tabs sit beside it: Quiz, Build Lecture, Mind Map and Mind Palace. The Learning Hub is available to every learner type, whether a medical student, resident, nursing student, nurse, nurse practitioner or physician assistant.
What can I upload to a Learning Hub notebook?
After clicking "Create new notebook", the "Upload a source" window accepts PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT and PPTX files, image files, or text pasted into the "Or paste text as a source" box. Several files can be added at once by clicking or dragging them in. Files and pasted text are added one type at a time, not mixed in the same step. Alma reads the files, splits them into passages and indexes them; the notebook card shows "Processing source..." until it is ready. A file that is already in the notebook is refused as a duplicate.
The upload limit is 100 MB per file, and pasted text can run to 1,000,000 characters. Notebooks can be renamed or deleted from the options menu, and deleting asks for confirmation because it cannot be undone.
How do I make a quiz from my sources?
Open the Quiz tab and press "Create Quiz" for a quiz straight away, or "Customize Quiz" to choose the settings. The Customize Quiz window has three choices:
- Number of questions: 8, 12 (the default) or 15.
- Level of difficulty: Easy, Medium (the default) or Hard.
- Focus areas: the sections Alma found in your sources, which you can tick or untick, with select-all and deselect-all.
Each focus area carries a colored dot: grey means not yet tested, green means tested with every answer right, red means tested with wrong answers. Once you have taken quizzes, quick filters appear for Not Yet Tested, Got Wrong and Got Right, each ticking every section in that state. At least one focus area must be ticked. When you press Generate, the quiz is built in the background. A message says generation started and that you can leave the page, and a small "Generation jobs status" indicator shows progress while you move around the app.
What do Easy, Medium and Hard mean?
| Difficulty | What the question asks you to do |
|---|---|
| Easy | Recall a fact that the vignette points to |
| Medium | Interpret the findings in the vignette |
| Hard | Apply a rule, guideline or formula to concrete numbers or findings in the case |
How are the quiz questions written?
Every question is a clinical vignette with five options (A to E) and an explanation for each option, explaining why the right answer is right and why each wrong one is wrong, plus a Key Takeaways line. Questions are grounded in your own sources and written in the style of the exam and training year saved in your profile. A Step 1 learner gets mechanism-style questions, a nursing student gets nursing-judgment questions in NCLEX style, and a physician assistant gets PANCE-style vignettes. The details are in our guide to how Alma writes questions for each exam.
For each question, Alma picks a passage from your sources, preferring passages that earlier quizzes from the same notebook did not use. A three-step pipeline then runs: a writer drafts the question, a second step checks the answer options, and a third fact-checks the question against the source passage. If Alma cannot write every requested question, because the sources are too thin, the whole quiz fails with a message such as "Could only generate X of N questions", and nothing is saved or counted. Broader sections, different files or an easier level usually fix this.
Can I tell Alma how sure I am?
Yes. Before pressing Submit, three optional buttons ask "How sure are you?": Guess, Unsure or Sure. Alma records the answer together with that confidence, how long you took and which try it was. A small "Don't ask" link turns the prompt off. These confidence taps feed a chart in Insights that shows whether feeling sure matches being right. During a quiz you can also mark, underline or strike through text in the question, options and explanations, and those marks are saved per question.
What happens after a wrong answer?
A button reads "Not sure why? Ask Alma". It opens Alma's chat already holding that exact question, your answer and the explanations. Alma coaches rather than lectures: after a wrong pick it first asks one short question to make you look at your own choice, gives a small hint, and explains fully once you have tried or asked twice. After a right pick it asks you to say why in one sentence.
What does the end-of-quiz report show?
Pressing Done on the last question opens a report. At the top are the score (for example 9 / 12), accuracy, and the right, wrong and skipped counts. A collapsible Summary card lists up to four short "Strengths" and up to four "Gaps to focus on", written from your own results. Below that, a question-by-question table shows your answer, the correct answer and the explanation. A coverage panel shows how much of each section has now been tested. The "Quiz Untested Areas" button opens Customize Quiz with the untested sections already ticked, or reads "Create More Quizzes" once everything has been covered. Quizzes are saved, so they can be reopened and retaken with "Retake Quiz", which restarts the same questions with the old answers cleared.
Can the Learning Hub build lecture slides?
Yes. In the Build Lecture tab, a slider sets the length from 5 to 50 slides in steps of 5, with a default of 20, and an optional Instructions box accepts requests such as "focus on trial data, concise bullets". "Create Lecture" writes an editable slide deck from the sources you ticked. Slides can be edited, added, deleted, and given an AI-generated image from a short description with "Add Image". A toolbar sets title font, body font, sizes, animation and bullets. "Download PowerPoint" exports a .pptx file, and "Export to Notes" downloads the text as a .txt file.
How does the Learning Hub mind map work?
"Generate Mind Map" draws a map from the sources ticked in the Sources panel. Clicking a box shows its detail and the original source text. Arrows expand or collapse branches, hovering over a box reveals a "+" to add a branch, and there are full-screen, Expand All and Collapse All controls. "Download as PNG" saves the map as an image.
Is there a chat tab for talking to my documents?
No. The Learning Hub has no Chat tab. Questions about your sources go to the Alma chat bubble, which searches your Learning Hub sources, notes and flashcards. That keeps one tutor across the whole app, so the same Alma that coaches you after a wrong quiz answer can also explain a concept from a lecture you uploaded.
What are the limits and plan allowances?
Quizzes and lecture builds count against a plan allowance once a learner is on a paid plan. In Alma's plan documentation on October 20, 2026, the Monthly plan allows 20 quizzes and 5 lecture builds per billing period, and the Annual plan 50 quizzes and 15 lecture builds. Uploads, mind maps and Mind Palace videos are not counted. Prices and allowances can change, so read the live Pricing page before relying on these numbers. Sizes: quizzes of 8, 12 or 15 questions, lectures of 5 to 50 slides, uploads up to 100 MB per file.
What does the Learning Hub not do?
- It does not use real or past exam questions. Questions are AI-written from your sources.
- It does not predict a score or guarantee a pass.
- It does not make quizzes from Notebook notes or from a topic alone. Quizzes come from Learning Hub sources.
- It can be wrong. Treat generated questions and explanations as drafts and check them against your course material.
A simple way to use it in a week
- Upload the week's lecture PDF and slides as one notebook.
- Build a 12-question Medium quiz on all focus areas, answering Guess, Unsure or Sure each time.
- Read the Gaps list, then use "Quiz Untested Areas" for the next quiz.
- For each miss, press "Not sure why? Ask Alma" and answer the first coaching question.
- Turn the same notebook into a slide deck or mind map for a different way to review.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Learning Hub work for nursing students, PAs and NPs?
Yes. The features are identical for every profession. The exam saved at sign-up, such as NCLEX-RN, PANCE or the AANP exam, sets the style of the questions.
Can I make flashcards from a Learning Hub notebook?
Yes, from the Flashcards page with "Import from Learning Hub". See AI flashcards from PDFs, slides and lecture notes in Alma for the workflow.
How long does a quiz take to generate?
It is built in the background and you can leave the page. The finished quiz opens automatically if you stayed on the Quiz tab.
Where can I read about the rest of Alma?
See What is Alma Study? and How to judge an AI study tool before you pay in med school.