Effective studying is not just about passively reading textbooks or notes; studying is about actively engaging with the material to reinforce your understanding of the concepts at hand and your level of retention. One powerful tool for active recall, is the humble flashcard. In this article, I will show you how to properly use Flashcards and why they are so beneficial for active recall.
The Power of Active Recall
Active recall involves actively stimulating your memory to retrieve information. Instead of simply reviewing your notes or a textbook, you now are forcing your brain to recall and produce the knowledge independently. This process of retrieving information, strengthens your memory and comprehension. Active recall is vital because it mimics real-life situations where you need to access information from memory. There are several benefits to actively recalling information:
- It enhances long-term retention
- Improves your understanding and comprehension
- Promotes deeper learning
- Identifies gaps in your knowledge
- Boosts your problem-solving skills
The Role of Flashcards
Flashcards are a very versatile and highly effective tool when it calls for implementing active recall in your study routine. The cards typically consist of a question and an answer. When you use Flashcards, you actively engage your memory to retrieve the answer before flipping the card to check. Here's why Flashcards are beneficial for active recall:
1. Chunking Information: Flashcards break down complex topics into bite-sized, manageable pieces. Each card focuses on a specific concept or fact, making it easier to digest and recall.
2. Spaced Repetition: Flashcards are perfect for spaced repetition, a technique that involves reviewing material at increasing intervals. As you review and recall information from your Flashcards over time, you reinforce your memory and enhance long-term retention.
3. Immediate Feedback: When you flip a flashcard to check the answer, you receive immediate feedback on your recall. This helps you identify areas of weakness and adjust your study focus accordingly.
4. Customisation: You have full control over the content of your Flashcards. This means you can create Flashcards tailored to your specific learning needs, ensuring you target the most important information. I wouldn’t recommend sharing your cards with others, or use cards from one other, because the effort you put into the cards you make already give you a learning opportunity, and second, they are adjusted to your needs and not those of other’s needs. When you use other’ flashcards, you don’t exactly know what you are missing from the theory on the topics you don’t know.
5. Portability: Flashcards are portable and can be used anywhere, making them a convenient tool for quick, efficient study sessions, whether you're waiting for a bus or have a few minutes between classes, even more so efficient when you use a mobile app for this. But to me, using handwritten cards gives you a higher retention rate. You can even use the cards on a walk outside and let someone else read the questions and let you answer.
How to Properly Use Flashcards for Active Recall
Now that we understand the benefits of Flashcards for active recall, let's explore some strategies on how to use them effectively:
1. Create Clear, Concise Cards: Only write 1 question or prompt on one side and the answer on the other. Keep both the question and the answer brief and to the point as possible. Otherwise, you are most likely to deal with illusions of competence. I’ll come to that later.
What’s the Right Card Size?
It's essential to keep Flashcards as concise as possible, ensuring questions are brief without any unnecessary details while adhering to the guidelines outlined above. This approach serves two primary purposes.
First it establishes a precise and exclusive connection between a specific question and its corresponding answer. Including additional information in your answer (or question) can lead to confusion during tests.
Second; a compact card size translates to efficiency, and efficiency leads to comprehensive coverage. For instance, I can create a single (handwritten) flashcard in approximately 1 minute, allowing me to handle 60 cards per hour. With 2-3 hours of daily study, I can cover anywhere
from 120 to 180 Flashcards. But when you do this digitally this can sure up your game and make them quicker. You might like to use the Brainscape Flashcard app while creating your own deck of cards. I have used this app in the past, but I like to stick with my handwritten cards.
2. Organise by Topics: Group your Flashcards by topics or subjects to help you focus on
specific areas of study.
3. Regular Review: Establish a consistent schedule for reviewing your Flashcards. Start with daily review and gradually space out your sessions as you become more confident in your recall.
4. Practice your Answers Out Loud: When seeing a question on the card and you say the answer to the question out loud, you are actively recalling the information, and are less tempted to flipping the card before recalling the information. Speaking out loud will aid in even quicker understanding of the materials. Your spoken words are being registered by your brain an additional time.
5. Study your Cards from Both Sides: Ever so important to study your card from both sides, the moment on the exam you are asked about one side of the card you can recall it just as easily as a question from the other side of the card. Studying both ways helps you build stronger neurological pathways into remembering your materials.
6. Mix Subjects: Interleave your flashcard sessions by mixing cards from different subjects or topics. This practice enhances your ability to differentiate and recall information in various contexts.
7. Test Yourself: Use the Flashcards as a self-testing tool. Attempt to answer the question or prompt before checking the answer. If you struggle, mark the card for future review. Or try the Three Pile Method. [LINK]
8. Stay Patient and Persistent: Active recall with Flashcards requires patience and persistence. Don't be discouraged by initial difficulties; with regular practice, your recall will improve.
9. Flashcards are Not a Silver Bullet: Remember they are just one method of reviewing your materials and situational. They don’t always work best on every subject that you might need to study. So, it is important that you have a combination of several different study methods, from experience this works best. Want to find out more about which study techniques you would prefer, read my article, and find out. [LINK]
How About Context?
Part of having a specific question means putting the appropriate context in the question. This ties your knowledge not only to specific questions, but also to specific contexts, which is another useful hook for remembering information. Often, when I see a question on the viticultural/vinicultural exam, I deduce the answer not only because I know a particular fact, but because I also know it’s relevant in a certain context. For example, when studying in wine, I know that clay soils are referred to as “cold soils” (knowledge), but in my cards I talk about different clay soils, I make sure to mention what qualities the soil possesses (i.e. water retention, gives more powerful wines, it’s made of really fine particles) when it comes to different climates (context), as the question changes the possible outcome to a question can differ. Seeing ‘the bigger picture’ is quite significant, especially when studying in wine.
Are They Relevant?
While studying, you will naturally generate questions that could potentially be used on flashcards. However, it's crucial to recognise that not all suitable flash card questions are applicable when it comes to an exam. Either due to the format of the test or the nature of the course material. When composing your flashcard questions, seize the opportunity to sift through and exclude non-testable information. This strategic approach significantly reduces the number of materials you need to study.
For instance, you could also choose only putting the content you are struggling with on a flashcard, from theory that you need to know for your exam. This way you can practice repeatedly, so you will remember easier over time.
Don’t Do This! A Misleading Sense of Competence
Often our minds blur the line between recognition and recall. When we recognise something, we essentially acknowledge that we've encountered it before. Recall, on the other hand, involves actively retrieving information from memory without any external prompts (hints). without careful attention, our brains can easily mix up these processes!
Upon flipping the card, you may convince yourself that you remember a specific detail even though you might have missed it while practicing the question, but in fact when flipping the card your brain only recognises the answer (because he read it somewhere before, you didn’t actively recall the information! That is why you always put in one question with one answer option on your cards. And that one answer option, can be a whole sentence.
However, if you have a combined question/answer, it helps by splitting these facts into individual cards, you can ensure that you either answer each one correctly or incorrectly. This approach aids in more efficient studying and prevents the misleading sense of competence that comes with assuming you've grasped all aspects of the material. But when push comes to shove on the exam and you do come across the question to which you only recognised the answer from, you don’t know the answer from actively recalling, so it is important to not letting your own mind mislead you.
How many Flashcards should you have in a deck?
Overtime I have been asked the question about “How Many Flashcards Should I Have in a Deck?”. Well, the right deck size is one that fully meets your learning objectives on a certain topic, so, it can be anywhere between 20 and 200 cards per deck. There are two major reasons for this.
- If it is too small, you will start seeing the same cards repeatedly, which doesn’t optimise your learning curve.
- When decks are too large – over 200 cards – than you can become really frustrated when a deck will take too long to master, which can be truly demotivating.
So, strive for organised content within your decks anywhere between 20 and 200 cards each, which helps you to set up more “achievable” short-term goals. When there might be a topic that is unavoidably long, then you can divide the deck into two sets: "Viticulture 1: Set 1” and “Viticulture 1: Set 2”. About 50 cards per topic will do just right.
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Resources
Rising Fellow, “How to Memorize Flashcards More Effectively”, - Accessed on March 28, 2024