For those who use Anki a lot during M1 and M2, how long does it take you to translate your lectures into your own Anki decks

[CuriousMDStudent]

Hey all, I found Anki to be immensely helpful for me during some premed courses in college and I learned how to make good Anki flashcards that worked for me (short questions and answers; cloze cards).

However, I wanted to ask how long do you spend daily making Anki cards from your lecture PowerPoints. I've read that some students say this takes too long but I really love Anki as I can't memorize things perfectly by reading it but rather repeatedly testing myself on the concepts and details.

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[smh343]

Had any M3s/M4s made a deck that goes along with your curriculum? That's what we all use at my school. I can't imagine making my own cards.

 

[Blazers_33]

I did Anki for a bit with lecture at the beginning...took way too long. Luckily we switched over and had NBME exams, had being the key word,...not anymore with COVID and everyone going home. But anyways I switched over to Anking and it is way better/easier to just sort through tags and find stuff.

I'm sure you could make Anki work with lectures if you are fast and make good cards, just understand it will take a long time. you may not be as efficient as you would like

 

[CuriousMDStudent]

@smh343 there's a drive apparently with a bunch of old notes and such. I'm sure there are decks. I'll check it out.

@Blazers_33 yeah I'll try to make my decks first. I notice that making cards are a sort of review for me as it forces me to go through the lecture/notes which I plan to do anyways. But if I find I spend too much time, then I'lll just resort to pre-made decks.

 

[slowthai]

@smh343 there's a drive apparently with a bunch of old notes and such. I'm sure there are decks. I'll check it out.

@Blazers_33 yeah I'll try to make my decks first. I notice that making cards are a sort of review for me as it forces me to go through the lecture/notes which I plan to do anyways. But if I find I spend too much time, then I'lll just resort to pre-made decks.

I'm telling you, just save yourself time and pain by jumping on Zanki or Lightyear instead. You can edit those decks to your liking (a lot of us go crazy with the annotating) to make them yours (with lecture notes, Wikipedia, Amboss, pictures, etc) and strengthen your learning process.

 

[CuriousMDStudent]

I'm telling you, just save yourself time and pain by jumping on Zanki or Lightyear instead. You can edit those decks to your liking (a lot of us go crazy with the annotating) to make them yours (with lecture notes, Wikipedia, Amboss, pictures, etc) and strengthen your learning process.

Yeah my plan is to go through the lectures. For each concept in the lectures, I'll search Zanki to make sure they have flashcards that cover the concept/details that are covered in lecture/by my professor. Transfer those cards over to my personal deck and then add more pictures or annotate them however I like.

If there are certain points/concepts covered in my lecture that aren't covered by zanki cards then I'll just make my own cards for those specific points.

 

[Type2Fiber]

I'm about to be in dedicated and I have been on the Anki train since day 1. I have yet to wish I spent more time on class lectures, I do wish I had completely finished zanki at this point. Do with that what you will

 

[slowthai]

Yeah my plan is to go through the lectures. For each concept in the lectures, I'll search Zanki to make sure they have flashcards that cover the concept/details that are covered in lecture/by my professor. Transfer those cards over to my personal deck and then add more pictures or annotate them however I like.

If there are certain points/concepts covered in my lecture that aren't covered by zanki cards then I'll just make my own cards for those specific points.

That searching process alone takes so long (it's definitely not as bad because of how they're tagged now). Personally, I just decided when I wanted to finish the entire deck and then divided the number of cards by the number of days that would take. I ended up doing 50 cards per day, more or less in the order of my curriculum. I'm far ahead of my curriculum and my workload is pretty manageable.

I think it's much more efficient to just do that and then cram the lectures a few days before the exam. I tried making cards for the stuff covered in lecture but it took too long (and I have a lot of experience making good quality cards at a fast pace); it was low yield. You have to understand that running through Zanki for whatever system you're on will give you a strong foundation for the cramming, so it'll just be like polishing the car you've already cleaned.

 

[Medic741]

Hey all, I found Anki to be immensely helpful for me during some premed courses in college and I learned how to make good Anki flashcards that worked for me (short questions and answers; cloze cards).

However, I wanted to ask how long do you spend daily making Anki cards from your lecture PowerPoints. I've read that some students say this takes too long but I really love Anki as I can't memorize things perfectly by reading it but rather repeatedly testing myself on the concepts and details.

I have a Mac and found a time-saving hack. Open up the lecture in a browser taking up 3/4 of your screen with Anki on the other 1/4 of your screen.

Hit command + shift + 5, click 'options' and select 'save to clipboard'

Reposition the screen capture over the portion of your screen playing lecture. Watch at 2x speed. When they say something important or they have a HY slide up, hit: command+shift+5 and then enter. Paste the slide into the back-side of your Anki card and ask an open ended question on front side. Listen for key words during the lecture and take a couple notes on backside of card, maybe add a few more screenshots so you have a coherent idea on a card.

Got good at this and could watch an hour long lecture in <30 minutes (skipping slides where it's like no **** this was covered 20x before by other lecturers) and have 5-10 Anki cards/lecture. Worked really well

 

[OnePunchBiopsy]

A one hour lecture, played back as a video at 1.5-2x speed, would take me 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to convert to Anki.