The tool below converts pasted notes into cued items, which is the form a guide has to take before it can test you.
WeSolve+ reads the whole document and writes the questions for you
Upload your PDF, photograph your notebook, or point the camera. WeSolve+ writes questions from that material, explains why each answer is right, reads the chapter back to you as a podcast, and remembers every item you missed until you own it.
The tool below is a small browser-only tool and it is not WeSolve+: paste a few lines and text rules turn them into cards on the spot. The real app, the one that uses AI, is behind the link above.
Notes to a guide you can be tested on
This is a browser-only tool, and that is all it isIt splits the text you paste by rule, and nothing else. WeSolve+ is a different thing entirely: it reads your whole PDF with AI, writes the reasoning behind every question, speaks the chapter back to you, and remembers what you missed so it can return it. Try the real app now, free!
This tool uses text rules, not AI. A line written as "term: meaning" becomes an entry whose explanation is hidden until you open it, and any other line loses its longest word so you have to produce it. That is deliberate: a guide you can only read is the version that does not work. Your text stays in the browser and is never sent anywhere.
Building it is the study. Reading it back is not
Deciding what goes in, what is subordinate to what, and what can be cut is real intellectual work, and it is why a guide somebody else wrote helps you far less than the one you made. What follows is where it goes wrong: the finished document is comfortable, familiar and easy to reread, and rereading it produces a strong feeling of knowing the material. The review by Dunlosky and colleagues rated summarising and rereading low utility while practice testing was rated high, and a study guide is a summary you wrote yourself. Build it, then close it and try to reproduce its structure from memory, which takes ten minutes and tells you more than an hour of reading it.
Order it by the exam, not by the book
A textbook is ordered so that each chapter can be taught after the previous one. An exam is ordered by nothing at all: it asks you to connect chapter two to chapter nine, and it does so precisely because those connections are where understanding shows. A guide that mirrors the book's order rehearses the book's sequence and leaves the connections unbuilt. The practical fix is to organise by question type or by theme, and to add a section that exists only to hold the cross links, the places where two chapters meet. A concept map is the version of this with the relationships drawn rather than implied, and it is worth one page even inside a linear guide.
What belongs in it, in order of usefulness
First, anything you would have to look up mid question: formulae, constants, definitions with precise wording, the three step procedure you always half remember. Second, the boundaries: which conditions a rule holds under, since most exam errors are applying a correct rule outside its range. Third, worked examples of the two or three question types that carry the most marks. What does not belong is anything you could reconstruct from first principles in twenty seconds, because it costs a line of your attention and it never repays it. A guide that contains everything is a book with worse typesetting, and it is the most common failure of a first attempt; a good study guide is defined by what its author was willing to leave out.
The section everybody leaves out
Put a page at the back headed things I still cannot do. Not topics, tasks: cannot balance a redox half equation without checking, cannot state the assumption behind that model. This page is the only part of the document that shrinks, and watching it shrink is the only reliable progress signal in the whole exercise. It also fixes the standard failure of self assessment, which is that confidence measured straight after studying is far too high, the finding known in the literature as a poorly calibrated judgment of learning. Naming a task you cannot yet do is harder to fool yourself about than naming a topic you have covered.
Guides made for a group, and the version that fails
Splitting a syllabus across four people and pooling the pages produces a document in an afternoon, and everybody learns their own quarter and nothing else, because the value was in the writing. If you split, the person who wrote a section should teach it to the others rather than send it, which puts the group through the useful part rather than the file transfer. That is learning by teaching, and the questions the others ask are worth more than the pages. The shared document is then a reference, which is what a guide should have been all along.
Assembling one from scattered material
Upload a PDF, a photograph of a page or a camera shot and WeSolve+ reads it and produces an explained quiz, a card deck and an audio recap of roughly one minute from that file. Because the cards are tied to the source they came from, a card you get wrong points back at the page that produced it, which is the reference function of a guide without the document. Items you miss collect in their own list, which is the things I still cannot do page keeping itself. At wesolveapp.com in any browser and on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, free to begin. Figures on pricing.
Sources used on this page
- Study guide
- Concept map
- Outline (list)
- Cornell Notes
- SQ3R
- Judgment of learning
- Metamemory
- Learning by teaching
- Generation effect
- Levels-of-processing effect
- Free recall
- Active recall
- Testing effect
- Spaced repetition
- Dunlosky et al., improving students' learning (2013)
- Roediger and Karpicke, Test-Enhanced Learning (2006)
- Karpicke and Roediger, the critical importance of retrieval (2008)
- Cepeda et al., distributed practice meta analysis (2006)
- What Works Clearinghouse, organizing instruction and study
- The Learning Scientists, retrieval practice
- Retrieval Practice, the research library
- Cloze test
- Anki manual, importing text files
- MDN, the details element
- MDN, the textarea element
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2
- WeSolve+ on the App Store
- Mind map
| Kind of content | Include | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Formula you always look up | Yes | It costs marks mid question, every time |
| Condition a rule holds under | Yes | Most errors are a right rule used out of range |
| Worked example of a high mark question | Yes | Two or three carry most of the paper |
| Definition you could reconstruct in twenty seconds | No | It uses a line and never repays it |
| A full chapter summary | No | That is the book, reformatted |
| Things you still cannot do | Yes, at the back | The only part that should shrink |
Is making a study guide worth the time?
Making it, yes. Rereading it afterwards, mostly not. The decisions about what to include are the study; the finished document is a reference.
How long should a guide be?
Short enough that you were forced to leave things out. A guide containing everything is the textbook with worse typesetting.
Should I follow the order of the book?
No. Books are ordered for teaching, exams are not. Organise by question type or theme and keep a section for the places two chapters meet.
Does anything I paste get uploaded?
No. The conversion happens in your browser and nothing is sent. Closing the tab is the end of it.
Can I split a guide with friends?
You can, but the person who wrote a section should teach it rather than send it. Otherwise each of you learns a quarter of the syllabus and files the rest.
Why does the tool hide the explanation?
Because a guide you can only read is the version that does not work. Hiding the second half turns each entry into something you have to answer.
Last updated: 2026-08-15