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A day after the lecture, the student needs only ten minutes to repeat the course. In a week - it will take five minutes. In a month - a couple of minutes will be enough for his brain to “answer”: “Yes, yes, I remember everything.” A study conducted at the University of Alberta showed a positive effect of the Flashcards-Plus methodology on student grades.
But the Leitner system can be used not only in schools and universities. Founder of CD Baby Derek Sievers called card learning the most effective way to support the development of developer skills. With his help, he mastered HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The hero of another example - Roger Craig in 2010 won the television game Jeopardy! and received 77 thousand dollars in prize money.
In online learning, the system is used everywhere: there are almost no educational services where cards would not be integrated. The system is used in the study of almost all basic disciplines, and dozens of specialized applications have already been developed for it - both desktop and mobile. The first of them - SuperMemo - was developed by Peter Wozniak in 1985.
First of all, he tried to improve the educational process for himself - in relation to the study of English. The method brought results, and the software turned out to be quite successful, and it is being updated now. Of course, there are other, more popular applications like Anki and Memrise , which use the same principles as SuperMemo.
Method prerequisites
One of the pioneers of experimental psychology, Herman Ebbinghaus, studying the patterns of memory at the end of the 19th century, described the so-called dynamics of forgetting. Later, scientists repeatedly repeated his experiments, examining the " Ebbinghaus curve ", and found that it varies depending on the characteristics of the material being studied. So, lectures or poems, being meaningful material, were remembered better. In addition, the quality of memorization was influenced by individual characteristics and external conditions - fatigue, quality of sleep and environment. But in general, studies have confirmed the basic laws of the phenomenon discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus.
On its basis, a seemingly obvious conclusion was made: in order to preserve knowledge, a repetition of the material is required. But for the high efficiency of the entire process, this must be done at certain time intervals. This technique of repetition at increasing intervals was first tested on students by Herbert Spitzer of Iowa State University in 1939. But the Ebbinghaus curve and the interval repetition technique would have remained merely observations if not for Robert Björk and Sebastian Leitner. For several decades, Björk studied the features of memorization, published dozens of works that significantly complement the ideas of Ebbinghaus, and Leitner proposed a method of memorization using cards in the 70s.
How it works
In the classic Leitner system outlined in the book How to Learn to Learn, he recommends preparing several hundred paper cards. Suppose, on one side of the card there will be a word in a foreign language, on the other - its interpretation and examples of use. In addition, five boxes are needed. The first is all the cards. After viewing them, cards with unknown words remain in the box; in the second, already familiar ones fall. The next day, you need to start again with the first box: it is obvious that some of the words will be remembered. So the second box is replenished. On the second day - you need to review both. Cards with famous words from the first box are moved to the second, from the second to the third and so on. "Unknown" return to the first box. So all five boxes are gradually filled.
After the most important begins. Cards from the first box are reviewed and sorted every day. From the second - every two days, from the third - every four days, from the fourth - every nine days, from the fifth - once every two weeks. That which was remembered is moved to the next box, that which is not, to the previous one.
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In order to remember everything or almost everything, it will take at least a month. But daily classes will take no more than half an hour. Ideally, according to Björk, it is necessary to restore what has been studied in memory exactly when we are already beginning to forget it. But in practice, this moment is almost impossible to track. Therefore, to achieve one hundred percent result will not succeed. However, using the Leitner method after a month, one can recall much more than a fifth of the information that remains in memory according to the observations of Ebbinghaus.
An alternative approach is the use of specialized software. Such software has two differences from the “paper” method. Firstly, almost all have mobile versions, which means that you can do it on the way to work or study. Secondly, most applications allow you to set user-friendly time intervals for repeating what has been learned.
What is the result
Interval repetition is somewhat reminiscent of regular exercise, which is necessary for muscle training. Repeated processing of the same information encourages the brain to remember it more efficiently and store it in long-term memory.
The brain says to itself: “Oh, I see it again. But if so often it’s worth remembering. ” On the other hand, the Leitner system should not be perceived as a "silver bullet", but rather as an effective tool to support the educational process. Like any other teaching technique, it should be combined with other methods.
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