Interactive Video Questions: Study While You Watch

Video is one of the easiest ways to start learning, but it is also one of the easiest ways to drift into passive studying. You press play, the explanation feels clear, and ten minutes later you realize you have been watching more than learning.

Scholarly now has interactive video questions for video lectures. When a video has a transcript, Scholarly can prepare checkpoint questions from the lesson and pause the video at important moments so you can answer before moving on.

The goal is simple: turn video watching into active recall without making you leave the lecture.

What changed

Interactive questions now appear directly on the video page. Scholarly reads the transcript, identifies moments where a concept has just been explained, and generates short multiple-choice questions tied to those timestamps.

When the feature is enabled, the video pauses at those checkpoints. You answer the question, see whether you got it right, read a short explanation, and then continue watching.

This works best for lecture-style videos, AI video lectures, uploaded videos with transcripts, and YouTube videos where a transcript is available.

Why questions inside videos help

Most students know that practice questions are useful. The problem is timing.

If questions come too late, you may have already forgotten the context. If they are buried in a separate quiz, you have to switch tools and rebuild the thread of the lecture. If you only watch the video, the material can feel familiar without actually being remembered.

Interactive video questions put the check right after the explanation. That gives you a small retrieval moment while the concept is still active in memory.

Instead of asking, "Did that make sense?" the video asks, "Can you use that idea right now?"

What the experience looks like

After the transcript is ready, the video page prepares a set of interactive questions. You will see a compact panel under the video with the next question and the full list of checkpoints.

During playback:

• The video pauses at a checkpoint when interactive questions are enabled.
• You choose an answer before continuing.
• Scholarly shows the correct answer and a grounded explanation.
• You can continue the video after answering.
• You can review earlier checkpoints from the list.

The pause behavior is intentional. If the feature is turned on, a checkpoint should behave like a real study moment, not a notification you can accidentally ignore.

Turn questions into flashcards or quizzes

A checkpoint is often a good signal that something is worth remembering. After answering a question, you can create study material from that exact moment.

From a checkpoint, Scholarly can help you make:

• Flashcards focused on the concept that was just tested.
• A short quiz based on the checkpoint and nearby transcript context.

This makes video lectures less isolated. A good explanation can become a review card, a practice question, or part of a larger study workflow.

Your preference follows your account

Interactive questions are enabled by default because the feature is most useful when it appears naturally while watching.

If you prefer uninterrupted playback, you can turn them off. That setting is saved to your Scholarly account, so it follows you instead of only living in one browser tab.

When you turn questions back on, checkpoints resume as part of the video experience.

When to use it

Interactive video questions are especially useful when you are:

• Watching a dense lecture for the first time.
• Reviewing a recorded class before an exam.
• Learning from a YouTube explanation.
• Turning an AI video lecture into a study session.
• Checking whether you understood a process, definition, or argument.

They are less useful when the video is background listening or when you intentionally want a continuous pass through the material. In those cases, turn the feature off and come back to the questions later.

A better loop for video lectures

The larger idea is that video lectures should not end at "watch." Students need a loop:

1. Watch the explanation.
2. Answer a question.
3. Read the explanation.
4. Save the concept into flashcards or a quiz.
5. Continue learning.

Interactive video questions bring that loop into the video page itself.

You can try it by opening a video with a transcript in Scholarly, or by creating an AI Video Lecture from your study material.