Usability not extension determines Flash Card content August 13, 2009

This morning I read a post about discovering that flashcards do work and they are a great way to study, the most important aspect of the post was that the author preferred to write down more complex Q&A than the typical Term-Definition flashcard as used by many online flashcards. The issue of writing them on paper deserves a post of its own, if you are interested in Supermemo, you’re probably already convinced paper can’t match digital anyway (might supplement it though).

Many argue that that flashcards should be very simple (e.a. “flash”) they mostly refer to the issue of extension or wordiness. My own experience, although doesn’t oppose completely to this way of thinking, shows that many simple Q&A questions don’t necessarily need to be short in extension.

The type of information included in my flashcards has suffered constant change, you could probably call it evolving,  trough the simple clozed sentences that later on I had no clue which word was missing and memorizing them felt parrot like repetition, to complex question with a short answer plus further explanations sometimes used now.

Currently my primary way of choosing the amount of information to include in a single flashcard depend mostly on usability, I try to figure out I’ll require to remember the data and what for.

For example if I need to recall what is some “normal” laboratory value like hemoglobin in adults, it makes no sense to include further explanation in the question or answer field. But if values are related by sex, say testosterone values, I would probably make the question emphasize this by asking: What are the serum testosterone values for  (male, female)?. In this specific case I don’t want to ever make a mistake by remembering the female value when a male value is needed, hence remembering this two values together makes more sense than learning them separately.

This seems to contradict the simplicity principle of supermemo, from my point of view though simplicity means as simple as possible. Some knowlegde nuggets need more space for storage in  my external hypocampus thats all.

An example of item with short answer plus explanation:

Which is better Interleaving or Blocking for study?[...]

#Title: Will That Be on the Test?
#Source: Spacing Effect-., Memory-., learning-.,-
#Link: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2425
#Element: 97173: [24/06/2009 04:52 p.m.] Will That Be on the Test?.. Ebbinhaus’s Spacing Effect …
#Article: 96269: Will That Be on the Test?

Answer:

Interleaving is better then blocking

Best is “interleaving” practice items, as opposed to “blocking” them en masse. Example: redesigning syllabi to include short reviews of previous lessons at the end of each class.

Taggin for SuperMemo (2) June 1, 2009

This is a post for items only (follow up on previous post).

Fastest and very easy to implement solution till today:

The keyword tagging line:

keyword1-., keyword2-., keyword3-., … keywordN-.,-

The reason for using the “-.,” combination  is simply speed, and easiness when typing, any three punctuation symbols or any symbol would work fine, but is better if no “Shift” or “AltGr” is necessary in order to type them, and also if the three are side by side, so that you can write them fast enough.

The hyphen at the end of the tagging line is only for SuperMemo labeling (I use the “source” label for topics)

Keyword phrases are simply written as this: keyword phrase1-., keyword phraseN-.,

Usually the best part to put this line tags is at the bottom of the text in the answer component. Although counter intuitive, putting the tagging line in the answer component makes no interference with the formulation of the question or answering the question.

Why could you need this?

This way of tagging allows you to revise items only on a specific topic, and you loose less time reading titles of items.

You want to search or learn about a specific type of
information defined by a simple word or phrase (e.g. type of seizure,
say “fever seizure”) but you don’t want to revise any item that has
that word (e.g. “fever”) on it.

If you have your collection classified  by specific information on specific folders, this probably is no big help to you. But I tend to put information as fast as possible into SM and latter only organize this items using Ctr+Shift+P: Alt+C to change them to categories (Everything new goes to .C_Desktop category at first).

If you to prefer fast storing and would like to have a fast way to organize and revise information related to a certain topic this probably is useful.

When should you you tag an item?

Very important items: always any time. Basically you should tag any very important (must not forget item) the moment you add this item to the collection or when you encounter type of items items afterwords.

Items found trough search procedures: Tag them the moment you search for them. (There is a high probability you are going to need it the the future).

Any other item: No need to tag them.

Other places where to implement this
If you also have the info packrat disease as me, any place you take notes would be great to implement a system as this. Although if using paper I’d probably go for using some sort of common placing index instead.

medicine-., tips-., tagging-., items-., supermemo items-.,-

(previous post on the subject)