Advise for Spaced Repetition

In my school’s program, we have 2-3 weeks to learn material anywhere from 400-600 slides and take the exam. We test twice a week as well. Is there an optimum spaced repetition setting for this? What I have been doing is I just do all the cards leading up to the exam. Appreciate any help. Thanks

I’d recommend either Zach Highley’s or AnKing’s settings. Never tried them but because they are medical students, I assume they have similar workloads as you do. A Share: Popular Anki Settings for RemNote Just make sure though to use the correct learning steps as I have pointed out on one post in the linked thread

Actually, I looked at their setting it doesn’t really work for me. For example this week, we are learning 400 slides of pharmacy with the last lecture on Friday and test on it immediately on Monday. If you think it sounds terrible that’s 100% lol

How many flashcards do you usually create per slide? Just to get a better idea of your workload

About 400 to 500 cards. I suspend them if Ive seen them 3 times and I recalled easy. So night before exam I only have 200-300 to run through before the test.

Does this work well though because if it does, there’s no reason to really change your algorithm

It does but if forces me to study test to test with crammed sessions. We go through 8 hours of lecture a day but thats 4 different subjects… and then we get tested every 2-3 weeks on these subjects. I guess I am hoping more than anything if there is a better way to do it haha.

I don’t think I can help much with that tbh. If I understand correctly, you review each card around 3 times total before a test. That’s pretty much the minimum I’d say and I wouldn’t go lower than that. I personally do 4 reviews per card total within two weeks if I only press good and 2 reviews if I press easy at least once on a card. So yeah hopefully someone has some better advice

Are you quite sure every slide deserves a card? Do these semimonthly exams also contain hundreds of questions, in other words? You may be better off spending a bit more time choosing which notes/slides to turn into flashcards and keeping up with a lighter review workload than cramming for the exams and then never looking at the cards again. It’s certainly a more effective way to remember the information for a long period of time.

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We are kinda forced to do that. We have exams twice a month for each subject. Meaning our exams are twice a week like clockwork. Tbh my hand is forced to suspend the cards after the exam because there’s so much material to cover. But the older cards do serve me well when I need to relook concepts. I say 90% of the slides need a card. It’s only 50 question exam but spread out from the material. You really can’t just have an idea of what a concept is. For example, I might know what polycystic ovarian syndrome is, but I also need to know how it manifest on labs, the symptoms, treatment etc. I know it sounds horrible because it is :joy:

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I can only hope passing grades are relatively generous in that case. Might it be wise to try and glean some commonalities between the cards you do have and organise them rather than cramming them individually and suspending? Hopefully, the additional structure will help you to learn analogous material easier and possibly fill some stuff in on the spot by deduction rather than recall.

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