Flashcards are a default study strategy for many students: help them build better decks by encouraging creating thinking alongside the recall process.
Action Items
Explain to students that flashcards reflect just one strategy for studying and should be combined with other options (i.e. summarizing lecture notes and readings, explaining the topic to others, creating mindmaps of a chapter)
Encourage students to make their own flashcards while they are learning. Suggest they create 3-5 flashcards after every lecture or chapter to help them study all semester long instead of cramming for the exam
Direct students to keep their flashcards simple. Each card should have ONE piece of information.
Help your students study SMART. They should write down when they plan on reviewing their flashcards and set achievable and realistic goals for using the flashcards.
They can use the Study Schedule Guide to set these goals.
Three Ways to Improve Flashcard-ing
Flashcards are personal study tools that should be created with meaning for the student. Below are three ways that students can make their flashcard deck for valuable.
Make unique flashcards: don't download a set online. Students can use apps or physical cards as long as they go through the process of creating the content. Students should add drawings, images, sounds (digital), and other sensory inputs to improve their deck because the multi-media approach requires they think and form additional connections.
These digital apps allow students to add photos and more to their flashcards
Get loud: verbally share the answer. Students can form study groups (yay for socializing) or record themselves saying the answer verbally. If in a group, their partners can verify if the answer is actually correct, and if alone the audio recording can help hold them accountable to the right answer. When studying in silence, it is too easy to cheat ourselves and think...I got it close enough. Listening back to the answer can show the confidence and the growth areas in the material.
Sort and filter: track progress when studying. Students should organize their flashcards into knowledge piles (or categorize them in the app-space). The knowledge piles allow students to visualize their improvement to build motivation and recognize places where office hours and additional help to learn may be helpful.
Pile #1 are the confident and correct cards
Pile #2 are the correct but a low-key guess cards
Pile #3 are the incorrect cards
