That’s a fair question with a surprisingly complicated answer.
Before I get to it, let me explain that I had a weekly ritual for reminding them about the potential for personal Anki use and the value I placed on it. Every Monday morning started with a written reminder on the board and an oral reminder from me that the class deck had been updated, uploaded, and was now ready for them to download. I invited them to pull out their phones and download the latest deck at that time, and gave them a couple of minutes to do it. Depending on the season, I would also remind them that “Anki is school EZ MODE”, and “Anki is our study guide” for the mid-term, final, etc.
Of course, way more phones came out than were ever downloading my deck, but I felt the cost was acceptable.
This brings up another limitation of Anki: the fact that it costs 25$ on iOS. From a survey I gave the year before, I know that more than half of my students use iPhones. I made sure they knew they could be using it for free on their desktops, linking their desktop profiles to Ankiweb, and studying for free from their phone’s web browser… but that smells like effort. Effort AND cost? They rejected it out of principle, offended by the suggestion.
Anyway, I didn’t directly poll my students because I felt like I already knew the answer from the downloads and didn’t feel it was worth the risk of lowering the prestige of Anki further. You see, by about 6 weeks in there were maybe 1 or 2 students per class still downloading. If I asked the class to “raise your hand if you’re using Anki on your own” those 1 or 2 people would have felt like losers, and maybe not even raised their hands. The same effect would have been only moderately reduced with a written survey, because the first thing students do after a survey is ask their peers what they wrote. Either way, they would have gotten the impression that “nobody is using Anki on their own”. You know how studies show that teens think their peers are having way more sex than they really are? I chose to let my students think their peers were getting way more Anki. Never underestimate the power of social proof on teenagers.
Another fun dilemma: It occurred to me that whole-class Anki use was probably cannibalizing personal Anki use. I suspect that many of the ~25 people who downloaded my deck during the first two weeks soon stopped because it felt redundant. I was left to choose between two scenarios:
Scenario 1: We use Anki together in class, and about 110 of my ~180 students get something out of it, but only 3 people get the most of it by using it on their own.
Scenario 2: We don’t use Anki in class. 25 students (optimistically) get the most out of Anki. Nobody else gets anything from it.
Even if I felt like total learning was higher in Scenario 2, I’m strongly incentivized to choose option 1. I know who those 25 students would be. They were destined to pass the state test and get As in my class with or without Anki.
Guess which scenario looks better on my annual performance review?
How about asking them for that information? It would give you the information. It would show them that you care about them using it.
That’s a fair question with a surprisingly complicated answer.
Before I get to it, let me explain that I had a weekly ritual for reminding them about the potential for personal Anki use and the value I placed on it. Every Monday morning started with a written reminder on the board and an oral reminder from me that the class deck had been updated, uploaded, and was now ready for them to download. I invited them to pull out their phones and download the latest deck at that time, and gave them a couple of minutes to do it. Depending on the season, I would also remind them that “Anki is school EZ MODE”, and “Anki is our study guide” for the mid-term, final, etc.
Of course, way more phones came out than were ever downloading my deck, but I felt the cost was acceptable.
This brings up another limitation of Anki: the fact that it costs 25$ on iOS. From a survey I gave the year before, I know that more than half of my students use iPhones. I made sure they knew they could be using it for free on their desktops, linking their desktop profiles to Ankiweb, and studying for free from their phone’s web browser… but that smells like effort. Effort AND cost? They rejected it out of principle, offended by the suggestion.
Anyway, I didn’t directly poll my students because I felt like I already knew the answer from the downloads and didn’t feel it was worth the risk of lowering the prestige of Anki further. You see, by about 6 weeks in there were maybe 1 or 2 students per class still downloading. If I asked the class to “raise your hand if you’re using Anki on your own” those 1 or 2 people would have felt like losers, and maybe not even raised their hands. The same effect would have been only moderately reduced with a written survey, because the first thing students do after a survey is ask their peers what they wrote. Either way, they would have gotten the impression that “nobody is using Anki on their own”. You know how studies show that teens think their peers are having way more sex than they really are? I chose to let my students think their peers were getting way more Anki. Never underestimate the power of social proof on teenagers.
Another fun dilemma: It occurred to me that whole-class Anki use was probably cannibalizing personal Anki use. I suspect that many of the ~25 people who downloaded my deck during the first two weeks soon stopped because it felt redundant. I was left to choose between two scenarios:
Scenario 1: We use Anki together in class, and about 110 of my ~180 students get something out of it, but only 3 people get the most of it by using it on their own.
Scenario 2: We don’t use Anki in class. 25 students (optimistically) get the most out of Anki. Nobody else gets anything from it.
Even if I felt like total learning was higher in Scenario 2, I’m strongly incentivized to choose option 1. I know who those 25 students would be. They were destined to pass the state test and get As in my class with or without Anki.
Guess which scenario looks better on my annual performance review?
That’s a great answer :)