I wish someone would test spaced repetition software for high schoolers or undergrads. That even has the excuse of everyone needing a PC or a tablet to do it, and we being able to easily afford that only recently, for why it hasn’t been done before. Mnemonics are great for quick low-effort cramming for remembering things overnight, but spaced repetition can be for life.
I’m having trouble coming up with any complex instruction given in schools that doesn’t directly lead to being tested in an exam. Can think of very few lessons in any sort of metacognition, some half-hearted mindmap thing mostly, and none at all where a specific metacognition method was being used in concert with an actual course.
I wish someone would test spaced repetition software for high schoolers or undergrads.
What makes you think they haven’t? When I look through the cites in http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition the majority of stuff was done with students of various age levels between elementary & college.
It might be an issue of how broad you define spaced repetition. I think a lot of those cites use a fairly broad definition but no Anki/Memosyth/Supermeno is involved.
Spaced repetition alone has probably been floated around, but giving students tablets and making them use Anki themselves to study at home might be new.
Spaced repetition in instruction might work great as long as the single teacher running the experiment is doing it, and is then going to go away after the experiment stops. Some of the students exposed to Anki might keep using it by themselves after being taught to.
I’m having trouble coming up with any complex instruction given in schools that doesn’t directly lead to being tested in an exam.
That depends a lot on the school. Mathematical proofs that take an hour to complete don’t lend itself to testing in exams.
Mostly I think the problem is that schools are really bad at teaching things that don’t lend itself to being tested. I had multiple teachers who did taught the idea that success is due to talent instead of being about the amount of time you put in.
If someone would have set me down and explained to me that hard work is really important, that would have done a lot.
Most subjects where some form of emotional intimacy is involved don’t lend itself well to being tested.
I wish someone would test spaced repetition software for high schoolers or undergrads.
Spaced repetition requires sincerity and discipline. You need to look at the question, understand it, decide just how well you remember the answer and act accordingly. And you need to do it every day.
Moreover, efficient spaced repetition, as I found, requires custom-taliored questions. You have to use your own cards.
If I was actually running this experiment and had ideal resources, I’d
Set up the students’ default SRS server to be hosted by the school, and give them extra credit if they log in every day and do their daily reviews.
Add some automated checks to detect usage patterns that probably represent just clicking through the thing without thinking.
Provide a small common set of new cards to everyone based on each lecture, after the lecture. Everyone sat through the same lecture, so they can handle some of the same questions.
Have instruction about making good cards, and have the students make their own cards as homework at the beginning of the course. The homework exercise cards would be reviewed like any homework.
Would give extra credits to students for up to tripling the default deck with their own questions, which would pass some sort of spam filter check for random gibberish and a human inspection in questionable cases.
Yes, I know, overjustification effect and everything for using credit as the carrot to make the students use the system. Still, should be worth a try.
Also could just make the finished deck the “course project” which you’d submit along with doing the final exam for review, and which would contribute to your grade. So you’d want to have covered the material with good questions and have a good review profile.
Could also give students the choice between a SRS course and a regular one, where in the regular one their grade would be entirely defined by the exam, while in the SRS course points from the review of the deck they made would be added to their test score for determining the grade. “You do some random busywork and you’ll get a guaranteed grade lift on that nasty calculus course.”
Spaced repetition requires sincerity and discipline. You need to look at the question, understand it, decide just how well you remember the answer and act accordingly.
I don’t think sincerity is such an issue with SRS. It’s relatively easy to understand that it’s unfun to have cards that you don’t know at all coming up because you hit good the last time when you should have hit again.
As far as having to do it every day, I don’t think that’s true. If you skip a day that’s not optimal and you have to answer the cards the next day. It will also be a bit harder to answer them the next day. I think that teaches something to the kid about consequences.
I wish someone would test spaced repetition software for high schoolers or undergrads. That even has the excuse of everyone needing a PC or a tablet to do it, and we being able to easily afford that only recently, for why it hasn’t been done before. Mnemonics are great for quick low-effort cramming for remembering things overnight, but spaced repetition can be for life.
I’m having trouble coming up with any complex instruction given in schools that doesn’t directly lead to being tested in an exam. Can think of very few lessons in any sort of metacognition, some half-hearted mindmap thing mostly, and none at all where a specific metacognition method was being used in concert with an actual course.
What makes you think they haven’t? When I look through the cites in http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition the majority of stuff was done with students of various age levels between elementary & college.
It might be an issue of how broad you define spaced repetition. I think a lot of those cites use a fairly broad definition but no Anki/Memosyth/Supermeno is involved.
Spaced repetition alone has probably been floated around, but giving students tablets and making them use Anki themselves to study at home might be new.
Spaced repetition in instruction might work great as long as the single teacher running the experiment is doing it, and is then going to go away after the experiment stops. Some of the students exposed to Anki might keep using it by themselves after being taught to.
That depends a lot on the school. Mathematical proofs that take an hour to complete don’t lend itself to testing in exams.
Mostly I think the problem is that schools are really bad at teaching things that don’t lend itself to being tested. I had multiple teachers who did taught the idea that success is due to talent instead of being about the amount of time you put in.
If someone would have set me down and explained to me that hard work is really important, that would have done a lot.
Most subjects where some form of emotional intimacy is involved don’t lend itself well to being tested.
Spaced repetition requires sincerity and discipline. You need to look at the question, understand it, decide just how well you remember the answer and act accordingly. And you need to do it every day.
Moreover, efficient spaced repetition, as I found, requires custom-taliored questions. You have to use your own cards.
I don’t see most high schoolers adapting it.
If I was actually running this experiment and had ideal resources, I’d
Set up the students’ default SRS server to be hosted by the school, and give them extra credit if they log in every day and do their daily reviews.
Add some automated checks to detect usage patterns that probably represent just clicking through the thing without thinking.
Provide a small common set of new cards to everyone based on each lecture, after the lecture. Everyone sat through the same lecture, so they can handle some of the same questions.
Have instruction about making good cards, and have the students make their own cards as homework at the beginning of the course. The homework exercise cards would be reviewed like any homework.
Would give extra credits to students for up to tripling the default deck with their own questions, which would pass some sort of spam filter check for random gibberish and a human inspection in questionable cases.
Yes, I know, overjustification effect and everything for using credit as the carrot to make the students use the system. Still, should be worth a try.
Also could just make the finished deck the “course project” which you’d submit along with doing the final exam for review, and which would contribute to your grade. So you’d want to have covered the material with good questions and have a good review profile.
Could also give students the choice between a SRS course and a regular one, where in the regular one their grade would be entirely defined by the exam, while in the SRS course points from the review of the deck they made would be added to their test score for determining the grade. “You do some random busywork and you’ll get a guaranteed grade lift on that nasty calculus course.”
I don’t think sincerity is such an issue with SRS. It’s relatively easy to understand that it’s unfun to have cards that you don’t know at all coming up because you hit good the last time when you should have hit again.
As far as having to do it every day, I don’t think that’s true. If you skip a day that’s not optimal and you have to answer the cards the next day. It will also be a bit harder to answer them the next day. I think that teaches something to the kid about consequences.