Thursday, October 4, 2012

Creating flashcards with different SRS systems

Last week at the first meeting in a computer lab with my 25 first-year, Economic faculty students, I introduced the students to the concept of spaced repetition system (SRS) study and had them all sign up for accounts with Ankiweb.net and Quizlet.com.

During our second computer-lab meeting this week, students accessed their accounts and begin creating their own cards.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, in order for all students to have access to free SRS studying via a website and/or an smartphone app, Android smartphone students used Ankiweb.net, iPhone students used Quizlet.com, and non-smartphone students used Ankiweb.net

Overall, it went well.  Some students needed more help than others, but by the end, all but two students were able to create the 13 cards required for the current unit.  Some of the more technological savvy students even started studying their cards.

I might recommend, in this case; that you have all the Quizlet students and Anki students sit together.  That way it is easy to explain things and to assess progress.

The Ankiweb site, to be honest, while functional enough,  is designed to be used in conjunction with the free Anki computer program and not as a stand alone flashcard creation site.  One of the major drawbacks is that when students create decks via the website, they cannot choose name of the deck.  The first one is "My deck," and other new decks are "My deck1, "My deck2," etc.  However, as my students cannot download the program in the university computer lab, it is the best solution I can find for the Android smartphone students at this time.  Ideally, I will be able to find an Android SRS flashcard app that works with Quizlet.

The Quizlet website is very easy to use, and students can even choose to have the entire site with instructions be in their own language.  However, the flashcard studying portion of it is not SRS.  Yet, it seems to be the best choice to use with the best, free iPhone flashcard app that I can find, Flashcard Elite.

Ideally, it would be nice to have all the students doing the same thing at the same time.  However, this does not seem to be possible.  This combination of apps and methods seems to allow all students to study in a similar way and benifit from SRS flashcards.

1 comment:

  1. I'm also interested in Spaced Repetition System and for me, It's effective way to optimize our memory. I know SRS when visiting flashcard site that my friend recommended: http://www.superflashcard.com/. It has web version and mobile apps with systematic database and convenient functions. I love it.

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