tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post253966427621795645..comments2024-02-16T08:32:46.618+00:00Comments on Donald Clark Plan B: An AI online tool that students really do use to gets resultsDonald Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-18787196399754498432016-03-05T10:31:19.964+00:002016-03-05T10:31:19.964+00:00They generate their own questions and take care to...They generate their own questions and take care to construct questions that truly reflect deeper understandingthan just atomic facts. This takes time, hence their willing ness to work in groups to generate good content. You seem to be after a silver bullet that solves all problems. ANKI is not that bullet. It is just one of many tools one can use to learn.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-34130869943591017482016-03-05T09:48:47.651+00:002016-03-05T09:48:47.651+00:00Donald could you please elaborate on how these stu...Donald could you please elaborate on how these students use Anki and integrate it with more classical pedagogical approaches?<br /><br />I am a student in a highly quantitative field and, despite using Anki on a regular basis to learn foreign languages, I find it's use it pretty useless when applied to university related content, especially in quantitative fields.<br /><br />I've used to help me prepare for some courses but these are my findings:<br /><br />1. You loose the big picture ---> in order for the cards to be effective, they must contain a limited amount of informations; frequently this means that you have to fragment a concept in tiny bits of information, de facto losing the big picture.I find the cards useful to memorize a mathematical formula, or the properties of a certain object (in my example it could be the properties of OLS regression residuals) or the text of a certain theorem but I find it useless to learn how to derive that formula or how to prove a theorem. In my opinion flash cards promote an isolated learning experience not inviting the student to build links between different (but related) concepts. <br /><br />2. It promotes a memorization mindset instead of comprehension one ---> with flashcards you are lured to just create a cards with the excuse to reinforce learning, for example putting in it a mathematical expression, instead of trying to understand what the expression really means, how it can be derived, how it can be visualized etc. Sure, it could be useful on a short term basis, when you need to learn that particular expression or concept in order to excel in a test, but in the long term you just lose it because you did not understand the concept when you learned it. I found a visualization approach or an approach like this (https://source.opennews.org/media/img/uploads/article_images/findingstory_transform.png) much more effective in the long term. Even for languages I found that on a long term you recall better the words learned not using the flashcards but by placing them in context in order to understand how they are used by native speakers (in this case the real-world use of the words better reinforce the neural patterns while the flashcards system makes you learn the word but it does not force you to use the word, sure, in the future when you will see the word you will probably recall the meaning but it's as probable you won't be able to use it in an active way)<br /><br />3. It is time consuming ---> especially when you have to deal with online textbooks, different papers, online lessons etc. to build your knowledge base (and I find this situation pretty frequent), using flashcards is just an added burden to the learning process. Writing cards is time consuming: it's true, if done in the correct way it could help you to reinforce the content, but speaking with other students using the flashcards system, I found that the most of them just put information in the cards without really thinking about it; they know the method will produce some sort of yield in terms of better retention and with this idea in mind they just produce an incredible amount of cards wasting enormous amounts of time.<br /><br />4. recalling is not always so efficient ---> when producing a vast amount of cards, even recalling becomes time consuming. When learning new words you usually put a roof on the maximum number of words you want to learn in a day (let's say 20). Depending on your proficiency in recalling the words, even with a learning rate of 20 words per day you find yourself reviewing 30/40 words learned in the past days, every day. With more complex topics this roof idea does not work, you are not able to limit yourself to a certain amount of cards and in this way you may find yourself in the need of reviewing up to 100 cards in a single day, not an ideal situation.<br /><br /><br />Since from what I can see in your article these students are really into learning with the flashcard system, I would like to know how they blend this approach with more traditional ones.sailjacknoreply@blogger.com