How to combine notes from slides, textbook and lecture into one document

How to combine notes from slides, textbook and lecture into one document

Most courses give you the same material three times: slides, a textbook chapter, and the lecture itself. Studying them separately means reading the same concept three times without ever connecting the versions.

Start from the skeleton

Slides are usually the cleanest outline of a topic, so use the slide titles as your headings. Each heading becomes a slot you fill from the other two sources.

Assign a job to each source

- Slides — structure, key terms, and the order the exam will likely follow. - Textbook — precise definitions, derivations, and worked examples. - Lecture — emphasis, exceptions, and the reasoning the slides leave out.

When two sources disagree, note both and flag it. Disagreements are exactly what open-ended exam questions probe.

The merge itself

Work heading by heading, not source by source. For each heading write:

1. A one-sentence definition in your own words. 2. The textbook detail that makes it precise. 3. One example, ideally the one the lecturer used. 4. A link to a related heading.

If a point appears in all three sources, it is a core concept — mark it. If it appears only in the lecture, it is often the lecturer's pet topic, which is also worth marking.

Keep one document per topic, not per source

Filing notes as "Lecture 7", "Chapter 4", "Slides week 7" guarantees you will hunt across three files during revision. Name files by topic instead, and keep a short source line at the bottom so you can trace a claim back.

Doing it with Bloom

Upload the slide PDF, the reading, and the lecture recording as separate notes, then use Multi-File Mode to study them together — ask questions across all three and generate a single merged summary, flashcard set, or quiz. The sources stay intact while the study material becomes one thing.

A quick quality check

Close the sources and try to explain the topic from your merged document alone. Anything you cannot explain is a gap, not a missing file.