Ten good questions from your own material, with an answer key you’ve checked

Anyone who teaches something at work sooner or later needs to know what stuck: a teacher closing a unit, a team lead rolling out a new process, whoever runs product training for customer support, a safety coordinator, the volunteer who shows newcomers around. A short quiz would tell them, but good questions take time, so they rarely get written. You find out what people missed on the day someone gets it wrong on the job.

An AI assistant drafts twenty questions from your material in less time than it takes you to write one. Left to itself, it also asks about figures nobody needs, writes wrong options nobody would pick, takes most questions from the first few pages, and now and then marks a wrong option as correct. The method below keeps the speed and catches those problems. By the end of today you’ll have a ten-question quiz that grades itself, checked by you and one colleague, with the link ready to send.

Start with what people should be able to do

Before any question, write down three to five things a person should be able to do after the training. Use verbs you could watch someone do: decide, find, spot, fill in, explain to a customer. “Understand the registration procedure” gives you nothing to test; “decide who gets the last seat” does.

After [this training / this chapter / their first week], people should be able to:
1. [verb + task]
2. ...
3. ...

Mistakes I've seen people make:
- ...
- ...

The second list matters more than it looks. The wrong options in a good question are the mistakes people really make, and you know those better than any assistant.

For example, take the made-up registration procedure from The procedure only you know. Sam runs a monthly workshop in a room for 24. She searches the payments portal by email, because people sometimes pay with a partner’s card. Bank transfers that haven’t arrived yet are marked Pending and still hold a seat. A registration with the accessibility box ticked goes to Daniel in facilities before anyone confirms it. Once all 24 seats are taken, new registrations get the waitlist email. Filled in for the colleague who covers for Sam, the template reads:

After their first week covering registrations, people should be able to:
1. Decide whether a new registration gets a seat, Pending or the waitlist email.
2. Find a payment made under someone else's name.
3. Handle an accessibility request in the right order.

Mistakes I've seen people make:
- Searching payments by name instead of email.
- Confirming before writing to Daniel.
- Counting only the Confirmed rows.
- Forgetting to update the count on the Dashboard tab.

What makes a question worth asking

A question earns its place when someone who skimmed the material gets it wrong and someone who understood it gets it right. Questions about a number, a name or a page rarely pass that test. Two questions about Sam’s procedure:

Weak: How many people does the room hold? A) 20 B) 24 C) 27 D) 30

Strong: The sheet shows 22 Confirmed and 2 Pending bank transfers. A new registration arrives, paid by card. What do you do?

• A) Confirm it; Pending doesn’t count until the money arrives.
• B) Send the waitlist email.
• C) Mark it Pending until Thursday.
• D) Confirm it and ask Daniel for an extra chair.

Answer and feedback: B. Pending transfers hold a seat, so 22 plus 2 makes 24 and the room is full. Registration 25 gets the waitlist email.

The strong question still checks the number 24, in the situation where it matters, and option A is the shortcut a new colleague would actually take.

The prompt

It works in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. Attach the material or paste it below the prompt, and ask for fourteen questions so you can drop the weakest four. To practice, use something public, such as a guide your organization already publishes, or Sam’s made-up procedure. For internal material, check first what your assistant’s plan does with files; Before you upload a client document lists the questions to ask.

The attached material is [what it is, e.g. "our workshop registration procedure"]. The quiz is for [who, e.g. "a colleague who will cover registrations"].

[paste your objectives and the list of mistakes]

Write 14 multiple-choice questions.
- Each question tests one objective. Spread them across the whole material, no more than 3 from any one section.
- Prefer short situations that ask what to do. Ask about a number or a name only if people need it on the job.
- Four options, exactly one correct. Base the wrong options on the mistakes above or on mistakes a beginner would plausibly make. Keep options similar in length. No "all of the above", "none of the above" or "Which is NOT".

Part 1: the 14 questions, numbered, each with options A to D. Nothing else.

Part 2, under the heading ANSWER KEY, for each question:
- the objective it tests and the correct answer
- source: the section and the exact sentence it is based on, word for word
- why each wrong option is wrong, one line each
- feedback: two sentences the learner sees after answering

Part 3: list any section of the material that no question covers.

The key comes last on purpose. When the reply arrives, copy Part 1 into a document before you scroll any further.

Take it yourself before you read the key

Answer Part 1 on paper, as a newcomer would, then open the key. Where you disagree, search the material for five or six words of the quoted sentence and decide who’s right. The key will sometimes be wrong, and it reads just as confidently when it is. Then fix or drop:

• questions where two options can be defended: rewrite the weaker one until it’s clearly wrong;
• giveaways, such as the only long option or the only one that fits the grammar of the question;
• questions anyone could answer with common sense alone;
• clusters: if one section still has more than its share, cut some.

For replacements, stay in the same conversation:

Drop questions [numbers]. Write [how many] replacements from [sections listed in Part 3], in the same format, with their key at the end.

Keep the best ten, and check that every objective has at least two.

Let the form do the grading

Google Forms and Microsoft Forms both have a quiz mode that scores each response as it arrives, so you never mark a stack of answers by hand. These steps were checked in October 2026; button names move now and then.

• Google Forms: start a new form, click Settings and turn on Make this a quiz. Add each question as Multiple choice, click Answer key, select the correct option and set the points. The feedback goes in Add answer feedback. To share, click Publish; once the button reads Published, click it and choose Copy responder link.
• Microsoft Forms (with a work, school or personal Microsoft account): select New Quiz, add a Choice question, select the Correct Answer check mark next to the right option and fill in Points. The Message icon next to each option holds the feedback for people who pick it. To share, select Collect responses, then Copy link. If your questions are already in a Word file or a PDF and your version of Forms shows Quick Import, it can turn the file into a quiz; you still mark the correct answers yourself.

Entering the questions is the slowest part, so do it in one sitting with your checked list beside the form.

Then a colleague takes it

Send the link to one colleague who knows the work, or who learned it recently. Ask them to note any question where they hesitated between two answers, and any they could have answered with common sense alone. Those notes tell you more than their score. If someone who knows the work still gets a question wrong, rewrite the question. Check their score against their answers too: a point missing or extra means an answer key set on the wrong option.

Try it today

Pick one piece of material you explain often: a procedure, a chapter, a product’s main features, the safety briefing. Block an hour for the build, and ask a colleague for fifteen minutes this afternoon. You’re done when ten checked questions sit in a form that grades itself, one colleague has taken it, and the link is in a message to the group, ready to send.

Note when you start and when you finish. The next quiz will have a time to beat.

Where to take it next

Once responses come in, the quiz starts teaching you. In Google Forms, Responses and then Summary list the frequently missed questions; in Microsoft Forms, the Responses tab charts how many people chose each option, and Open in Excel gives the points for every question (checked in October 2026). A question most people miss points to a problem in the question itself, the training or the material.

When it’s the material, Rewrite a dense document in plain language without losing a fact walks you through the rewrite, and the same quiz, sent to the next group, shows whether it worked. If you end the quiz with an open question (“What was least clear?”), Hundreds of open comments sorted into themes turns the replies into counts you can act on. And if the quiz is for new colleagues, it makes a good last step in A new colleague’s first week, ready in one sitting.