Flashcards have long been a popular way to study. There are various ways to use them, for subjects ranging from foreign language to science and of course medicine. Using flashcards to self-test helps you learn and retain information whilst identifying any weak spots you may have with the material.
Examples of Online Flashcard Sites
Brainscape which bills itself as “flashcards on steroids,” harnesses the power of this scientifically-proven retention technique to help students learn more easily and efficiently. In addition to testing their knowledge with Brainscape’s “smart flashcards,” users can also benchmark their progress, share with others, and bookmark cards for review at a later time. The basic app is free
Cram was originally founded in January 2001, when it was originally called Flashcard Exchange. Since that time, the site has grown into a thriving community of educators, students, and all types of enthusiastic learners. It can be used as both a desktop and mobile app and has both free and premium versions. With premium membership, you’ll get to study your flashcard sets ad-free. You’ll also be able to format your cards any way you want.
StudyBlue provides crowdsourced learning services, used by over 16 million students. Create your own flashcards quickly and easily. Registering for StudyBlue is free and studying your own material on StudyBlue is free. Premium features that require payment include gaining full access to the library of public decks and files posted by others with over 500 million flashcards and add to your own study materials with one click.
Study Stack – For each set of flashcards entered, the StudyStack website generates over a dozen ways for users to study the information they need to learn. The variety of study activities enables users to memorize data quickly without getting bored from using a single method of study. Studystack enables teacher to quickly enter data once and have a dozen different activities created for their students to memorise facts. Members can allow others to easily view the stacks that they have created and ones that they have favourited. StudyStack is funded primarily by advertisements so that it is free for everyone to use. But if you’d like to directly support StudyStack and not see ads you can pay to be a PRO user. There is also a “PRO Teacher” plan that you can use to remove ads for you and your students. Teachers can also create flashcards for all students to use without the students needing personal accounts.
Benefits
Flashcards can be downloaded and shared with other students in a study group or as a whole class.
There’s no limit to how many cards that can be created and shared and the database of flashcards can be reused for new cohorts of students as well as being shared across institutions.
Challenges
Content of flashcards needs to be quality tested to ensure that correct information is provided and that weblinks remain active.
To gain a sufficient volume of material requires engagement and time investment by the whole class and teachers.
Other considerations
It is important therefore that students are encouraged to make their own flashcards as well as using those created by others. This is because one of the most important and integral parts of the learning process of flashcards is the act of:
- Taking in new information
- Processing the information to make sense of it
- Creating something new with it to support recall – your own words, pictures, and methods of explaining that information
Doing so creates strong neural pathways, which enable the learner to easily retrieve what they have learned at a later date.