For adolescent balance drills, spreading sessions was not clearly better than packing them
Twenty-five teenage athletes improved stance and reach after equal-volume balance training; massed and distributed schedules looked similar on most tests.
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Spaced repetition
All blog posts with this tag.
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Teacher-made Anki decks tracked with better bioscience exams — among students who used them
In 799 first-year nursing students across 19 Norwegian campuses, flashcard users scored higher; assigning the deck to a campus was not enough by itself.
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Anki and flashcards: the complete evidence-based guide
What Anki is, how spaced retrieval works in decks, DEAME card design, FSRS vs SM-2, first-50 workflow, burnout, medical-school evidence, and when not to use Anki.
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Make It Stick: a deep digest of learning science
An expanded digest of Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel on retrieval, spacing, interleaving, desirable difficulties, and illusions of mastery — for study and teaching.
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Grade 7 students liked spacing more than they trusted it — and disliked interleaving
Two surveys (N=174 and N=233) show many seventh-graders underrate spaced and interleaved math practice even when research supports both.
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Instructor spaced flashcards did not lift microbiology exam scores — but confidence rose
In an intro microbiology course, spaced-repetition flashcards left exam means unchanged (p=0.27) while self-concept and “thinking like a microbiologist” improved.
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Spaced repetition: the complete guide to remembering more with less cramming
What spaced repetition is, why it beats cramming, how to set intervals, Anki vs calendars, FSRS basics, and when spacing fails — evidence without hype.
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More matured Anki cards tracked with higher preclinical CBSE scores in a small UNLV cohort
Among 36 students, mature cards (>21-day interval), study hours, and unsuspended cards all correlated with Comprehensive Basic Science Subject Exam scores.
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Grading “days practiced” beat grading “questions answered” for spacing — especially for lower-GPA students
Two RCTs of a Counting Days incentive: within one course, spaced practice days rose and exam scores improved; lower prior GPA mattered less.
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Classroom distributed practice beats massing — a meta-analysis finds a moderate edge
Across 31 classroom effect sizes (N > 3000), spacing study over time outperformed massed practice (d = 0.54), with hints of larger gains at longer delays.
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A pathology residency curriculum built around retrieval practice held up at five years
Five years of spaced testing in a two-year pathology core curriculum tracked rising practice scores and faster in-service gains for UK residents.
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Spaced repetition nearly doubled the odds of passing a French medical entrance exam
Among 523 Rouen candidates, spaced repetition remained an independent success predictor (aOR 2.09) alongside grades, sleep, sport, and prep courses.
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Spacing plus variation improved generalization — in neural nets and in fruit flies
Bio-inspired spaced training with controlled variation boosted ANN benchmarks; Drosophila experiments backed the same spacing-plus-variation principle.
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Anki and medical exam scores: what a systematic review actually shows
Eleven studies suggest Anki often links to better USMLE Step 1 scores when use is frequent — but course exam results are more mixed.
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Student-made medical flashcards go beyond rote facts — but often lack clinical depth
A qualitative review of 1,179 cards from popular med-student decks found varied question types — yet limited clinical complexity overall.
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Why spacing may need a ~24-hour window: synapse timing in multiday learning
In sea-slug neurons, a second training block worked best about one day after the first — not sooner or much later — hinting at a biological timer for spaced practice.
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Plastic surgery educators propose spaced repetition decks for trainee exam prep
A conceptual review argues that flashcard-based spaced repetition could help plastic surgery residents retain broad surgical knowledge.
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Anki helps medical students most when they use it consistently
A study of graduate-entry medical students found no overall exam advantage for casual Anki users — but students who used it consistently and extensively performed significantly better.
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Peer-led workshops pushed medical students toward active recall and Anki
A German “Study Smart” program found that students who attended peer-led workshops were more likely to adopt active recall and shared Anki decks.
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Anki use linked to higher scores on medical school exams
A cohort study found that medical students who used Anki scored higher on exams on average, even after accounting for prior test performance.
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The Breakfast Club: one hour of active retrieval improved resident learning scores
A small emergency medicine residency study suggests that even a single structured session using retrieval practice and explanatory questioning may improve both short- and longer-term test performance.
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A board-game flashcard session nudged musculoskeletal scores in medical students
RheumQuest paired competitive gameplay with clinical Q&A cards; knowledge scores rose modestly and confidence improved in a one-hour clerkship session.
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Only one in four Jordanian medical students use Anki — but fans swear by it
A survey of 318 students found Anki users report better retention for pharmacology and pathology, though grades did not differ significantly.
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A reinforcement-learning knowledge tracer beat standard baselines on ASSISTments
A 2026 Sensors paper reports that DRAKT, which combines reinforcement learning with a forgetting curve, predicted student performance better than common baselines.
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Judgments about your own learning help memory most when studying is passive
Three experiments suggest that predicting how well you will remember something can improve memory — but the benefit shrinks when learners already use effortful strategies like spaced repetition or reading aloud.
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Spaced reviews at 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days kept nurse skills sharp
A small RCT in knee-surgery instrument nurses found forgetting-curve scheduling beat conventional review — with gains still visible one month later.
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Testing-effect research is growing — but not for every learner
A review of nearly 24,000 scientific papers suggests retrieval-practice research still pays limited attention to neurodivergent learners and learning disabilities.
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An internship curriculum built around retrieval practice and spaced repetition reported better engagement
Saudi medical interns took modules on brain-friendly study habits; surveys showed higher engagement, lower reported stress, and improved workplace assessments.
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ChatGPT under teacher supervision helped medical students learn better
Students in an Indian medical college improved their exam performance after combining retrieval practice with supervised ChatGPT use.
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UK final-year students spend 80% of licensing exam prep on third-party tools — including Anki
A survey of 31 UK medical students found PassMedicine, Anki, and other external resources dominated AKT prep, with ChatGPT emerging as a study aid.
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Researchers catalogued 48 ways medical Anki cards differ — and why that matters
The DEAME framework gives educators and students a shared vocabulary for electronic flashcard design after analyzing 1,300 cards from popular medical Anki decks.
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More flashcard rounds make retrieval practice outperform rereading even more
A vocabulary-learning study suggests the advantage of active recall over passive rereading becomes stronger as learners complete more rounds of retrieval practice.
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Most first-year medical students use Anki daily — often while eating or exercising
A survey of 74% of one U.S. medical class found heavy reliance on pre-made decks, fill-in-the-blank cards, and multitasking during Anki sessions.
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Daily text-message quizzes did not improve residents’ exam scores in a large U.S. study
Nearly 300 pediatric residents received one practice question per day for a year — but most barely engaged, and exam scores did not meaningfully change.
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Retrieval practice works even in preschool — if children experience enough success first
Experiments with five- and six-year-olds suggest young children benefit from retrieval practice when learning is structured around frequent early success.
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One day or one week between practice sessions? A simulator study found little difference
Medical students training on a laparoscopy simulator reached proficiency in similar time whether sessions were spaced by 1–2 days or nearly a week.