Easy-to-navigate: flashcards
What does “easy flashcard navigation” mean?
When memorising information with the help of flashcards, you need to navigate them. But it can be done in different ways.
Traditional approach
Among flashcard apps, an algorithm has emerged, which, from the point of view of cognitive psychology, looks like this.
1. First, you watch, read, or listen to the question on the flashcard.
2. Then you try to remember the answer. If you are not sure of your knowledge, or just to check, you turn the card over.
3. Then you must — necessarily — assess the degree of your confidence in the correctness of the answer you remember.
4. Then you have to remember which side — left or right — the app developers assigned as the “know good” or “know bad” symbol.
5. And only then you have to move the card to the left or right, depending on your self-esteem. Only after that you will see the next card.*
That is, in addition to operating with the actual knowledge that you are trying to remember, you also need to keep in mind the correspondence of the left and right sides to the degrees of confidence.
But what if you find it difficult to determine this degree? If it’s 50/50, that is, not good but not bad either? You are obliged to give your answer in this case as well.
Steps of traditional flashcard review
So, in a traditional approach, your brain can be overloaded. Because you must evaluate yourself every time, with every card, without exception.
But why is it done this way? Because there is…
Spaced repetition
If you haven’t heard of this method, it consists in regular repetition of the knowledge that you are about to forget.
Because repetition is one of the most effective ways of memorising. This, with some limitations, was proved at the end of the 19th century by the German psychology professor Hermann Ebbinghaus.
For the purity of the experiment, he memorised pseudo-words consisting of 2,300 randomly selected syllables, such as LUR-FIP, WOZ-TAV, YIK-MUB, and the like.
He presented the results of his experiment in the article Über das Gedächtnis (“On Memory”), 1885. Andrew, the founder of Everycards, drew a diagram for you based on the conclusions from that article:
Ebbinghaus’ forgetting and learning curves
Repetition schedule
We found out, with the help of professor Ebbinghaus, that spaced repetition is generally effective. But which card to repeat right now?
Paper cards
If you’re learning with paper flashcards, there’s Leitner system. Simply put, you put the cards in boxes labeled Good, Intermediate, Bad, and so on.
Subsequently, you take, for example, seven cards from the Bad box and three from the middle box; repeat them, assess your confidence and distribute cards into the boxes again.
Software cards
Algorithms of flashcard apps do almost the same as Leitner’s “paper” method but also have additional settings.
To assign repetition rates to each card, apps use the traditional approach mentioned earlier. And that is fine. But not for everyone. Why?
Because spaced repetition is effective only over a long period of time, which is measured in months. And ideally you should study the cards every day. That is...
But for some reason, apps that adhere to the traditional approach to navigating flashcards use it almost without alternative.
And if you are urgently preparing for exams, then in addition to natural stress, you also spend extra mental effort to evaluate each card.
Memorisation: methods and tools
There is an alternative
The innovation of flashcard navigation in Everycards is that you don’t have to grade each card. But you can do it anytime.
From the point of view of cognitive psychology, navigating flashcards in Everycards looks like this.
1. First, you watch, read, or listen to the question on the flashcard.
2. Then you try to remember the answer. If you are not sure of your knowledge, or to check, you turn the card over.
3. Now you can swipe the card in any direction to see the next one.
If you are “bored” of any card, you can tap the button that marks the card as learnt. And then move it in any direction in the same way, even up or down. It’s that simple!
Thus, self assessment on Everycards is optional not mandatory. Therefore, your brain can work more efficiently.
Steps of flashcard review in Everycards
And to organise spaced repetition in Everycards, you can create a virtual analogue of Leitner’s box system. To do this, sort your cards into folders, albums, and categories. The app also automatically adds helpful timestamps indicating when each card was learnt.
The Everycards team has a plan to implement algorithmic spaced repetition. But it will turn on only at your request. We are working on making it convenient and easy to understand.
*Some apps use buttons with labels like “Good” and “Bad“ instead of gestures, but this does not exclude the obligation to rate them.
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