Gunner Training?

[hope2bpaindoc]

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A

 

[Alvarez13]

Any experiences with using GT for 3rd year rotations? Never used GT before but after reading this sit I wish I had. Greatly appreciate it.

Yes, I am trying to get caught back up with it after doing the step. After 100% completion a few months ago, my cards are down to about 100/day. This takes about 1/2 hour and is very manageable 3rd year (I'm not that fast, I've just done the cards so many times I don't have to think too hard).

Also, yes to the person asking about it helping. I had a case of Wallenberg syndrome last week and my attending asked me to explain the patient's symptoms. Right out of step 1 material. She was really impressed and it was awesome to see that card come to life.

GT definitely isn't enough to carry you through MS3, but it makes for a great base. I read patient charts and uptodate to add more to that base and have been really enjoying 3rd year.

 

[Alvarez13]

is anyone else having trouble loading their daily schedule? I was able to do it until noon today but keeps saying the server is down....is the great migration happening?

All I know is that last time they had website problems, a lot of us got a free month 😀

 

[MichaelPhelps]

GT is absolutely draining. Devoting 2 hours a day to bank 1st year material plus review questions(another 1.5hours). And its only the 1st week😱

I hear ya. I'm relatively new too, and my memory is getting WORKED. Though I like the feeling of keeping on top of my reviews with these facts and the progress works great as an incentive (liking the feeling of completing a subject by seeing that green bar fill up 😀). It's too early to tell how well facts are sticking, but I hope I can keep it up when I get deep into MS2 work. But I reeeeeally hope Firecracker's daily cap on questions works to some effect, in terms of not simply just DELAYING your workload and having it build up anyway. Maybe combine concepts into a USMLE-type question instead that covers multiple cards? *hint hint*

I'm at about 5.9/2.8 right now, lol. How are you personally progressing on 1st year stuff? Because it took me around 4 whole days to get through most of Biochem metabolism lol. I didn't realized how much I've forgotten...

Wait until you guys hit above 50-60% banked. Then you will feel the pain of daily GT.

 

[Mednomad]

Phelps,

On average how many daily review Qs do you have? Do you even have time to bank any more cards if youve got 400-500 daily review Qs?

 

[MichaelPhelps]

Phelps,

On average how many daily review Qs do you have? Do you even have time to bank any more cards if youve got 400-500 daily review Qs?

I quit doing the program. Look, people who go fast do like 150-200 Q's an hour, slow is probably 60-80 Q's an hour with most people in between. So do the math.

Honestly, if you have 300 Q's per day during M2 and go to a decent allopathic school it's rough. I think GT wants to sell to Caribbean students for 2 years and that's why their price is going up. Banking will usually take an hour if you're doing 4-10 cards depending on your familiarity. That could be 4-5 hours per day... M2 is also hard. Crossover of material is school dependent, some schools cross over pretty well but my school's curriculum didn't. If you knew GT cold you would NOT pass a lot of classes at my school. So I guess it's school dependent, but one thing is for sure. Those who use the program usually study a ton and then say then only do an hour or two a day. That's med students though, lots of people say they study less than they do.

 

[Mednomad]

Why would they sell to Carribean students? I mean its hard enough for a US allo med student to go through...

 

[MichaelPhelps]

Why would they sell to Carribean students? I mean its hard enough for a US allo med student to go through...

They have tons of time to prepare for Step 1. One IMG is taking a full year and probably has purchased every possible Step 1 product (pholston)... others can take 3-6 months off to study, most AMGs only get 4-6 weeks. Imagine if you had 3 months dedicated time to study Step 1, too long but it'd be nice, no?

Most people who stop using GT do so because it takes too much time. Most of the "new features" that GT is implementing that people are excited about are things to make GT take less time. There is not a lot of free time during M2.

Time.

So please tell your classmates that Firecracker isn't only for the super-hardcore med student! We can't wait until we get our 1,000+ USMLE style questions hooked up to all their relevant concepts.

I can't wait for you guys to see our USMLE style questions. They are authored by some of the top residents in the country and they are really really good. In concert with the rest of our program, they will really make things efficient and effective for any and everyone. Thanks!!!

We will likely increase our prices down the road but when we do it will be after we integrate at least the 500+ USMLE style questions we currently have and possibly after we provide an option to pay the same for the program without USMLE style questions (if you guys like this idea let us know; we see pros and cons. Con is that we believe in desirable difficulties and think USMLE style questions intertwined with your review sooner than most people typically do is a good idea.

This is the beginning of the end for GT.

I hope Bchandler is listening, adding USMLE questions into a content/fact recall - spaced repetition program is absolutely insane. It a $$$ move. It allows them to charge more and they obviously have invested in them. GT wants to be a bigger player, and to take the throne they need to beat out UWorld which is a tall order.

When I had USMLE Q's on GT it was awful. Flashcards are good for facts and recall, not for integrating information and problem solving... so to have USMLE Q's in the daily questions is silly. I guess if they let you do the Q's separately, that would be good.

Step 1 is too important (and time consuming) for me to adjust my whole study program on the whims of GT or whatever the popular opinion is that decides what GT will do.

I almost hung with the program but decided to do my own cards. I'll be interested to check in december/january and see how you guys are doing with 300 Q's a day and banking with M2. That would be murder at my school and I know with that time investment, anyone can do well on Step 1 with any resources alongside FA/Uworld.

You know what I noticed last year though, a lot of people who post in the GT thread just disappear as M2 goes along. I believe they just quit using the program although that's an assumption. I mean, you see these enthusiastic posters just disappear right when they should be using the program the most. I don't think it's because they're studying so much.

 

[GTP]

They have tons of time to prepare for Step 1. One IMG is taking a full year and probably has purchased every possible Step 1 product (pholston)... others can take 3-6 months off to study, most AMGs only get 4-6 weeks. Imagine if you had 3 months dedicated time to study Step 1, too long but it'd be nice, no?

Most people who stop using GT do so because it takes too much time. Most of the "new features" that GT is implementing that people are excited about are things to make GT take less time. There is not a lot of free time during M2.

Time.

+1
I'm currently getting burned by gts daily qs. Fc is taking too damn long to launch.

 

[thawunandonly]

Seriously, nobody's answered my question about that, though.

If a cap is placed, how will that help you? I don't know how it's being implemented but if it's simply just delaying the 100-200 extra questions you get for another day, is that not interfering with the timing of the repetitions and backing everything else up down the line?

If that's the case you might as well just stop at a set number and let everything back up on it's own.

 

[GTP]

Seriously, nobody's answered my question about that, though.

If a cap is placed, how will that help you? I don't know how it's being implemented but if it's simply just delaying the 100-200 extra questions you get for another day, is that not interfering with the timing of the repetitions and backing everything else up down the line?

If that's the case you might as well just stop at a set number and let everything back up on it's own.

Yah I think so. But at least I won't say fml and curse the owners of gt everytime I see 400 qs when I wake up in the morning

I'm not worried about repetition because I'm banking gt at a consistent rate. I'll be done by the end of feb. that's enough time to repeat things. And the reason my daily qs are so high right now is because I'm rating things so low. Especially cardio and neuro since we actually haven't covered these organ systems in school yet. Maybe I shouldn't have banked them

O well

 

[rxnfiend]

How is GT for M1? I was thinking about buying it to start medical school with in order to keep all those factoids in my head until Step 1. I tend to forget things I have not seen for months so figured this was a good plan. Is the $230/yr worth it for M1?

 

[Isradoc16]

How is GT for M1? I was thinking about buying it to start medical school with in order to keep all those factoids in my head until Step 1. I tend to forget things I have not seen for months so figured this was a good plan. Is the $230/yr worth it for M1?

I'm going to be giving it a try. Figure that it'll make the time commitment easier, as we can bank as the classes go along.

 

[Mednomad]

I really would like to see the number of people whove banked 100% compared to those who start the program.

 

[MichaelPhelps]

I really would like to see the number of people whove banked 100% compared to those who start the program.

My guess is 10%, no way it's higher than 20% of the people who have paid for memberships of some sort.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

How is GT for M1? I was thinking about buying it to start medical school with in order to keep all those factoids in my head until Step 1. I tend to forget things I have not seen for months so figured this was a good plan. Is the $230/yr worth it for M1?

Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing. I'm considering it.

 

[StephenMaturin]

Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing. I'm considering it.

Depends if you like the format. I really like it and wish I had used it during anatomy. Just sign up for the 1-month trial during the start of your anatomy class and see if it's working for you. http://www.gunnertraining.com/free_trial/10005097

 

[An0MalY]

anyone feel like the amount of cards on the review schedule, drops by 20% for no reason the day they are due?

 

[godson]

@bluv1212, thanks to your and everyone else's great feedback, we decided to keep our pricing the same for a while longer (even when Firecracker is ready for prime-time and the Firecracker payment system replaces GT's payment system). To keep things simple, however, were going to remove the recurring subscription plan that cost $29/month as well as the 3-month plan option.

We thought a lot about what you guys said and changed our plans accordingly. We want to reward people who want to sign up for a year in advance and keep our prices down as long as possible. We will consider raising them after we integrate 1,000+ USMLE style questions. When we are full replacement for FA and UWorld we figure we can justify charging more to pay back our investors. 🙂

And, we always want to show you guys love! Our SDN Firecrackers are the bomb! To that end, I thought I'd tell you guys first that, someday in Aug. 7th, we're going to be posting a free month coupon on the Firecracker fan page. The catch is that the coupon will only be valid for a day or two so we recommend you like the page to make sure you see the code in your Facebook newsfeed. We thought this would help atone for our suggesting that we may be increasing our prices. 🙂

Truth is if we can get more than just all of you super smart and forward-thinking med students and IMGs to use Firecracker, we can more easily keep our prices down. So please tell your classmates that Firecracker isn't only for the super-hardcore med student! We can't wait until we get our 1,000+ USMLE style questions hooked up to all their relevant concepts. That way you guys will be able to review, say, 500 concepts with 50 questions as opposed to 500... and be able to practice applying your knowledge on USMLE- and Shelf-like questions at the same time! Kinda like killing 10 birds with 1 stone.

here's the free 1 month coupon code from firecracker's fb feed: "firecrackersrock"
coupon expires Aug 9th at 6pm ET

 

[Bane]

Nm

 

[hrandani]

I can't say I'm surprised that all the issues people were warning them about last September just got worse instead of better.

It is sad though. Such promise.

 

[Bane]

Nm

 

[use your eyes]

Who else is doing this through 2nd year? Was gone for a couple weeks and took quite a hit

 

[Transformers]

im struggling to do it through 2nd year trying to integrate coursework with GT...GT matches nicely with pathoma so the cards are great; pharm GT at least the basic pharm section sucks as i have had to type up 120 slides of pharm-kinetics into GT

Anyways, yeah, any idea as to when FIRECRACKER is coming????

 

[Transformers]

hey what ive also found helpful..especially for pharm-micro is to print out the GT cards and annotate with class notes..hence you orient yourself by killing 2 birds with one stone

 

[happyfeet123]

Got the free trial to see what all the hooplah is about. Anyone have any experience using this with the 3rd year rotations?

 

[bchandler]

But I reeeeeally hope Firecracker's daily cap on questions works to some effect, in terms of not simply just DELAYING your workload and having it build up anyway. Maybe combine concepts into a USMLE-type question instead that covers multiple cards? *hint hint*

@thawundonly - you hit the nail on the head! Although we love the idea of caps, the main way we think we can best increase the efficiency of your study time is to ask you 1 integrative question rather than, say, 10 questions (1 for each concept).

Although we will initially launch Firecracker without caps or the hundreds of USMLE style questions our authors have already written, it's the first thing we are working right after launch since we think it will be the highest value to you guys! If we think about GT/FC as a tutor, what we have now is a slave driver that isn't always in touch with what you really need. But, by integrating the hundreds of USMLE like integrative questions we have (along with recall questions that also integrate material between and across topics), we will make FC a really awesome and smart tutor and not simply a spaced learning system. Spaced learning is great but adaptive spaced learning that shows you integrative questions when you're ready is much more efficient. 🙂

We will have the migration feature working later this week and will invite current beta testers at that time. Then when we're sure it works, we will invite everyone else! Sorry for the delay guys!

 

[bchandler]

Yah I think so. But at least I won't say fml and curse the owners of gt everytime I see 400 qs when I wake up in the morning

I'm not worried about repetition because I'm banking gt at a consistent rate. I'll be done by the end of feb. that's enough time to repeat things. And the reason my daily qs are so high right now is because I'm rating things so low. Especially cardio and neuro since we actually haven't covered these organ systems in school yet. Maybe I shouldn't have banked them

O well

Hi Guys, the other thing that will help reduce review burden is, on Firecracker, you will be able to "unbank" or un-Flag topics that you don't want to see questions on anymore. This way you can just focus on what you currently need to study. Then, if you reflag them, we will consider your previous performance on the related concepts when recommending when and what you study. The other thing here that we're thinking of doing is let you guys exclude concepts/topics that have been tagged with things like "Pharmacology". So that way, between what you have flagged and what you've excluded, you can really focus on what's important. If you guys have any thoughts on this let us know! This is based on a lot of feedback you guys have been giving us these past few years. Once we're on Firecracker you can expect improvements like this at a much faster rate!

 

[Brotato]

@Bchandler, so do you have a tentative ETA for the "cap Q's" feature? September? December? I've literally put GT on the back burner for now, waiting for this feature to come out. If it's not gonna come out for months, then I'll stop holding my breath and get back to doing Q's.

 

[GTP]

Hey everyone. Someone asked me a while back how gt is going with second year. I can comment a little more about it now since I just had my first module exam yesterday.

Well, the only question I remember (so far) getting wrong yesterday was on gt but it was usually the 300th question and I stopped paying attention by then (fml) lol. Pay attention to your daily quizzes!!! Lol

I think gt is very good for school. I don't know how I did on the exam (marks come back in a week), but I think gt helped a lot. It helped because I was 54% banked even before ms2 started, and it reinforced a lot of things that I didn't even have to think about on the exam yesterday. For example, gt drilled aplastic anemia and hydrops fatalis into me about parvovirus. I don't even have to think about this. It's just rote. I overheard some TOP students complaining today about how they didn't know what caused hydrops and there were like 4 questions about it on the exam.

I'll post more when we have cardio and other modules. But for now, I'm very happy with my choice to pursue gt. I don't rank/rate questions too generously. I like the repetition. School comes first for me, so I'm a little behind on gt now (1600 qs for today fml). I spend about 2 hours on gt daily. I rank about 5 cards a day and do the daily qs in between classes and during lunch.

 

[dmason24]

GTP, it sounds like you are going to class every day on top of doing GT review and course review. Are you limiting your board review material to GT only?

Good to hear that GT is coming in handy for your course exams. That was my biggest hope heading into M2 because the time we're putting into GT should have some immediate benefits as far as course exams go. Are people who are currently in M2 finding that GT cards are overlapping with current course material well? Again, the hope is that we won't have to spend too much extra time studying the course syllabi if GT is providing that knowledge. So with that, how much extra time are people giving to studying M2 material beyond GT?

M2 is demanding and my plan is to limit my resources to Pathoma and GT. I hope to be able to effectively learn most of what I need to know for exams through these 2 resources and study from course syllabi as needed.

 

[bchandler]

@Bchandler, so do you have a tentative ETA for the "cap Q's" feature? September? December? I've literally put GT on the back burner for now, waiting for this feature to come out. If it's not gonna come out for months, then I'll stop holding my breath and get back to doing Q's.

@Brotato, before we consider adding "caps" to daily review, we're going to see how much we can reduce the number of review questions you see by asking you 1 integrative question instead of, say, 10+ recall questions. We want to do this first because all caps would do without a substitution of integrative questions for multiple recall questions, is push questions into the future. Other members here have rightly pointed this out.

Doing the questions you have now will actually help reduce the review burden once we launch the USMLE like questions (and other integrative questions) since we are likely to initially implement a system wherein we show you an integrative question after you've reached a minimum level of proficiency (i.e. rated yourself a 3, 4 or 5) on at least 80% of the related concepts. We will then look at the data and adjust accordingly (i.e. if we find that they questions are still too hard, we will increase the bar (i.e. you may have to score a 4 or a 5 on 100% of the related concepts). Then we will build an artificially intelligent algorithm to do this in real time so that we can further personalize learning on the individual level.

What do you think?

 

[Mednomad]

Doing the questions you have now will actually help reduce the review burden once we launch the USMLE like questions (and other integrative questions) since we are likely to initially implement a system wherein we show you an integrative question after you've reached a minimum level of proficiency (i.e. rated yourself a 3, 4 or 5) on at least 80% of the related concepts.

👍

 

[bchandler]

GTP, it sounds like you are going to class every day on top of doing GT review and course review. Are you limiting your board review material to GT only?

Good to hear that GT is coming in handy for your course exams. That was my biggest hope heading into M2 because the time we're putting into GT should have some immediate benefits as far as course exams go. Are people who are currently in M2 finding that GT cards are overlapping with current course material well? Again, the hope is that we won't have to spend too much extra time studying the course syllabi if GT is providing that knowledge. So with that, how much extra time are people giving to studying M2 material beyond GT?

M2 is demanding and my plan is to limit my resources to Pathoma and GT. I hope to be able to effectively learn most of what I need to know for exams through these 2 resources and study from course syllabi as needed.

Guys, if we gave you the ability to add topics, concepts, images, questions, etc. would you use it to add content that is high yield for your courses but not necessarily for the USMLE or shelfs? We have this planned but want to know how much a priority it should be. If you have any thoughts let us know! We are all about killing multiple birds with one stone (even though we like birds, we like the analogy more!) and studying for the USMLE/Shelf/Clerkships AND classes at the same time would be awesome!

 

[An0MalY]

I am a third year.. Studying for step1 I had multiple decks of anki and GT going on.. Ideally I would want to combine them all in one platform. This year I have questions on anki from NMS and school related content.. Combining and the ability to share with classmates would be beneficial. Competing for mastery would also be fun. I did not religiously do GT during second year..I regret that. Any time frame on step2?

 

[Transformers]

bchandler...I like that Firecracker offers a BASEline of the most high yield information for the boards. That, first and foremost should be your priority as a company competing with firstaid, uworld. And so far, incredible, I think everything mentioned in GT so far is something I needed to know for class. But because GT is a long-term source that students ought to integrate with classes and because each school varies in terms of the content in GT (i.e.- perhaps some topics go beyond than what is tested during MS-1 or MS-2 or some schools don't), it seems plausible to allow a.) FC users to edit their cards and modify/create questions for those new details and b.) allow FC users to add new cards and questions for those cards...you basically make FC into a pre-existing anki deck that students can modify which is incredible. Sometimes when I see that oh i have new questions, I'm like wow that is helpful or wow, that's something trivial...at this established state in GT content-wise, I think there becomes less and less unison as to what additions are beneficial. so YES, please allow that function.

The next is the media issue...hopefully, what would be incredible is if you can upload images/videos or even better type in the hyperlinks for .jpegs, youtube video hyperlinks that automatically appear in the FC media interface without having to click on it (i.e.- kind of like watching a vid or viewing an image on someone's fbook wall without actually having to go to the website)...just some food for thought. That would make FC a very interactive, all-in-one platform.

Personally, my only concern is that I have actually annotated a lot in GT in the notes function (posting links to youtube clips, images, etc...for each of my cards). In addition to my GT progress, can you please have these notes be automatically transferred when I use the new FC platform cards? This would alleviate the immeasurable burden of having to copy/paste notes for each card.

Thanks.

 

[loveoforganic2]

@Brotato, before we consider adding "caps" to daily review, we're going to see how much we can reduce the number of review questions you see by asking you 1 integrative question instead of, say, 10+ recall questions. We want to do this first because all caps would do without a substitution of integrative questions for multiple recall questions, is push questions into the future. Other members here have rightly pointed this out.

Doing the questions you have now will actually help reduce the review burden once we launch the USMLE like questions (and other integrative questions) since we are likely to initially implement a system wherein we show you an integrative question after you've reached a minimum level of proficiency (i.e. rated yourself a 3, 4 or 5) on at least 80% of the related concepts. We will then look at the data and adjust accordingly (i.e. if we find that they questions are still too hard, we will increase the bar (i.e. you may have to score a 4 or a 5 on 100% of the related concepts). Then we will build an artificially intelligent algorithm to do this in real time so that we can further personalize learning on the individual level.

What do you think?

bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.

I recognize that firecracker is trying to increase their competitiveness in the step prep market by a) decreasing the daily time commitment and b) offering step 1 style questions. I think the best way to do the former is a "super high yield" only format (maybe lite mode offers that, I don't know, I just do comprehensive). For the latter, my personal preference would be to offer the question bank as an entirely separate subscription. I will admit that this is because there are other solid/well established question banks already on the market and don't personally have the interest in working through an "unproven bank." However, if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.

The step-style questions that are already in the daily review bank are just a slight hindrance, and I'd rather they not be there. It messes up the flow of knocking out review questions and isn't a style of question that benefits from spaced repetition. However, the replacement of multiple fact-recall cards with integrative cards would be a greater detriment to the efficacy of the program. I'm quite sure you're firm in your decision to implement step-style questions in some form, and if you choose for business reasons to offer these questions as a package deal with the spaced review elements of firecracker, fine. I think you would be making a big mistake though in implementing the program the way you propose - you would end up with a lower quality spaced repetition program, and really, that's where firecracker has it's niche. Don't lose that.

I have a test in a week, so I didn't proofread that and will only be monitoring this thread intermittently, but I'd be more than happy to further discuss this as I see replies.

 

[dmason24]

Guys, if we gave you the ability to add topics, concepts, images, questions, etc. would you use it to add content that is high yield for your courses but not necessarily for the USMLE or shelfs? We have this planned but want to know how much a priority it should be. If you have any thoughts let us know! We are all about killing multiple birds with one stone (even though we like birds, we like the analogy more!) and studying for the USMLE/Shelf/Clerkships AND classes at the same time would be awesome!

Being able to integrate course material into firecracker would be great. That way the future firecracker can be the one place I do most of my studying. Especially being able to upload images would be great. With this feature, it would be helpful to differentiate the cards we create from the rest of the cards (different background color?). Also, having the option of creating questions for user-created cards to be added to the daily review would be a useful feature.

The next is the media issue...hopefully, what would be incredible is if you can upload images/videos or even better type in the hyperlinks for .jpegs, youtube video hyperlinks that automatically appear in the FC media interface without having to click on it (i.e.- kind of like watching a vid or viewing an image on someone's fbook wall without actually having to go to the website)...just some food for thought. That would make FC a very interactive, all-in-one platform.

One definite way to improve to improve FC is being able to more easily integrate our personal notes, images, videos, etc. with the cards. In addition to having the notepad, if we can have the option of having text box or image box appear next to the bullet point we want to add notes to would be really helpful.




Thanks to GT/FC for listening and the enthusiasm to improve the product.

 

[dmason24]

if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.

I agree. GT has been great for hammering home the facts and I, along with others I'd assume, are using it to build a solid knowledge base before tackling Step 1 style questions/Q banks. I personally don't mind having a few step 1 style questions in the review bank now (it reminds me how I should be thinking when approaching Step 1 questions) but totally replacing the straight fact recall review questions with Step 1 style questions would take away from the product. I agree with loveoforganic in that keeping the Step 1 style questions separate and available for users to access when they choose to is a better option.

 

[minwoo]

I'm not sure if this has already been suggested but would it be possible to add a notes/annotate section on each of the review question cards? I know there is a notes section for when we initially study a topic but it would be nice to be able to add some personal notes/mnemonics/links to images and videos for a particular review question (ie: difficult concepts/pathways/mechanisms involved) as I do the daily reviews!

 

[Brotato]

I'm not sure if this has already been suggested but would it be possible to add a notes/annotate section on each of the review question cards? I know there is a notes section for when we initially study a topic but it would be nice to be able to add some personal notes/mnemonics/links to images and videos for a particular review question (ie: difficult concepts/pathways/mechanisms involved) as I do the daily reviews!

Minwoo you can already do this. When you're doing quizzes, press "S" and then click the little notepad square button at the top of the screen ---> voila! you can edit/view your notes & annotations. And yes this isn't perfect, because it's based on you remembering whether you have notes for a question or not. If this is what you meant, then I agree. They should add an indicator that you have notes.

 

[minwoo]

Minwoo you can already do this. When you're doing quizzes, press "S" and then click the little notepad square button at the top of the screen ---> voila! you can edit/view your notes & annotations. And yes this isn't perfect, because it's based on you remembering whether you have notes for a question or not. If this is what you meant, then I agree. They should add an indicator that you have notes.

Aw thank you...did not know this was possible! But yes having some kind of indicator showing that a note is available for the particular question would be really great!

 

[jccrozb]

bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.

I recognize that firecracker is trying to increase their competitiveness in the step prep market by a) decreasing the daily time commitment and b) offering step 1 style questions. I think the best way to do the former is a "super high yield" only format (maybe lite mode offers that, I don't know, I just do comprehensive). For the latter, my personal preference would be to offer the question bank as an entirely separate subscription. I will admit that this is because there are other solid/well established question banks already on the market and don't personally have the interest in working through an "unproven bank." However, if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.

The step-style questions that are already in the daily review bank are just a slight hindrance, and I'd rather they not be there. It messes up the flow of knocking out review questions and isn't a style of question that benefits from spaced repetition. However, the replacement of multiple fact-recall cards with integrative cards would be a greater detriment to the efficacy of the program. I'm quite sure you're firm in your decision to implement step-style questions in some form, and if you choose for business reasons to offer these questions as a package deal with the spaced review elements of firecracker, fine. I think you would be making a big mistake though in implementing the program the way you propose - you would end up with a lower quality spaced repetition program, and really, that's where firecracker has it's niche. Don't lose that.

I have a test in a week, so I didn't proofread that and will only be monitoring this thread intermittently, but I'd be more than happy to further discuss this as I see replies.

Chimed in for the first time to echo this sentiment. The step style questions that you are planning to integrate in the system could be as well written as UWorld, but they would simply be one way of asking a concept and would be quickly memorized using GT's spaced repetition. Keep the open ended questions. I want to work for the facts and get them down cold... I'll learn how to integrate and answer step question using your "exam" feature or other qbanks.

 

[fleshwound]

bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.

This is KEY. For a concept that I've rated a 5 and seen 50x already, seeing it just one more time isn't so bad. Most of the time, I barely need to read the answers. Or I'll take a quick glance and that one second reinforces it once again. I could perhaps get through 10 of these rapid fire cards in the time that it takes to see a new integrative question. After a few rounds of that integrative question, I'll have memorized the answer and for future instances, just take a mental shortcut that bypasses all the actual facts that I'd rather reinforce.

What can help (slightly, perhaps) with the time-consuming nature of GT is to have some sort of timing function. A timer that counts up (measuring duration of flashcard review) would at least keep users more time conscious. I already use a pomodoro app and a timer on the side to make sure I'm not dwelling too long on a card. This has already cut down on the time I spend doing my daily review.

 

[bchandler]

bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.

I recognize that firecracker is trying to increase their competitiveness in the step prep market by a) decreasing the daily time commitment and b) offering step 1 style questions. I think the best way to do the former is a "super high yield" only format (maybe lite mode offers that, I don't know, I just do comprehensive). For the latter, my personal preference would be to offer the question bank as an entirely separate subscription. I will admit that this is because there are other solid/well established question banks already on the market and don't personally have the interest in working through an "unproven bank." However, if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.

The step-style questions that are already in the daily review bank are just a slight hindrance, and I'd rather they not be there. It messes up the flow of knocking out review questions and isn't a style of question that benefits from spaced repetition. However, the replacement of multiple fact-recall cards with integrative cards would be a greater detriment to the efficacy of the program. I'm quite sure you're firm in your decision to implement step-style questions in some form, and if you choose for business reasons to offer these questions as a package deal with the spaced review elements of firecracker, fine. I think you would be making a big mistake though in implementing the program the way you propose - you would end up with a lower quality spaced repetition program, and really, that's where firecracker has it's niche. Don't lose that.

I have a test in a week, so I didn't proofread that and will only be monitoring this thread intermittently, but I'd be more than happy to further discuss this as I see replies.

@loveoforganic2, please please stay on SDN. This is GREAT feedback. Totally agree with your concerns.

Your awesome feedback is making me think we should instead: 1) create a high yield option to reduce review burden for new users and 2) initially implement the USMLE style questions as a stand-alone question bank and then 3) include USMLE style questions into the review ONLY when you have achieved mastery of all related concepts (i.e. raise the bar for "unlocking" these USMLE style questions). Moreover, if we know your exam date, we can time the USMLE style questions for 2-3 months prior to your test. And, just so you know, we plan on having many thousands of USMLE style questions so the likelihood of repeating the same question will be lessened. And, once you've reached mastery of all related concepts and have unlocked a USMLE style question, we will still ask you recall questions that our system predicts you may forget (based on your performance and the performance of your peers on that related concept).

Since you brought up the high-yield option, I'd love you and other's feedback on how to best achieve this. We've actually already gone through our content and tagged things that we think are high yield (based on the insight of our authors who have scored 273, for example). But in the new world of a computerized USMLE, we worry that there may be some bias here since everyone's test is different these days (and likely to get increasingly so, we believe). Then again, we have so many authors/editors who scored really high so collectively what they believe is high yield is likely to really be HY. We also have many top residents writing content for us who are at places like MGH and BWH. They can provide their insight into what is HY as well, particularly for Step 2 / Shelfs / Clerkships.

Any opportunity for user feedback here? Any other ideas? Thanks for the awesome feedback guys! Let's figure this USMLE style question thing out together. I promise when you see them you will be impressed. Our guys (admittedly a little biased! 😉) say they are better than UWorld or Kaplan Qbank questions so we're really excited to get them to you no matter how we (FC + you guys!) end up choosing to do so!

 

[MedicalStudent5]

Well, I wanted to chime in and respond to these ideas - because I’m bored and also because I dedicated a significant amount of time to this program during M1 before abandoning it. I made a few posts a few pages ago about my philosophy (and Brotato accused me of being a poster called ICY - Dude, I’m not ICY. Just look at the writing structure that we have and grammar. I remember reading his stuff and finding either weird grammar or misspellings which I thought was odd since he owned step 1 w/ a 250+). Anyway, I wanted to just chime in on a few things about why GT may not be a great as some of you think.

I always find it funny when people mention that gunner training helps. It’s like, “really!? No **** bob.” You put in 20 hrs a week in every free moment you have and study compulsively during free moments of your day, beginning to be completely unrecognizable and a normal social human being because you have this burning idea inside you that you need to do ___ cards today. I mean, are you serious? Of course it WORKS. You are spending multiple hours per day studying board material and giving up any moments you normally had to be relaxed. I remember people saying they did lots of cards on the toliet. What? Lol. I began to understand that the person who uses GT is just that, a compulsive gunner. Well, that’s not all of the users BUT it is the successful users. WHY? Because GT alone is useless. You heard me correctly. GT is a supplement, it is completely useless without things like FA and Uworld. Please go look at any review in the 2012 Step 1 thread about GT users. The only ones who were really successful went something like this: Oh, I used Uworld, Kaplan Qbank, GT, then did question books, and also read through first aid like three times. I remember one guy who literally had used EVERY major prep material out there.

I like relating these ideas to the interplay between men and women dating, because it’s an interesting analogy and let’s be honest, most of us in the end are very motivated by the opposite sex. Even those chasing success are sometimes doing it just to get chicks. Anyhow, guys will sometimes approach women with magic tricks or palm reading, or weird stuff like that, then they will go around telling everyone to learn this stupid **** because it’s great for picking up chicks. NO IT’S NOT. It’s just an activity that is getting you to actually talk to women. Is it really efficient or is it just actually getting you up to the plate to swing at pitches? It’s not a magic trick that gets a woman, it’s a masculine, confident male… People all the time get results and then all the sudden they assume what they are doing is efficient. You see this in a post above and I’ve seen it a lot on GT, (Oh, I remembered something from GT on a rotation, GT works. Oh, I got like 4 questions right on an exam, GT works). Lol guys. Spending 20 hours a week on something SHOULD work. It doesn’t mean it’s efficient. Guess what, if you spent 20 hours reading through first aid and Uworld every week, IT WOULD WORK TOO! Lol. If you are using high quality resources in a disciplined way then it will work. Stop thinking if this works or not and ask yourself if it’s efficient.
Another poster mentioned they have 1300 questions, lol, average question rates are anywhere from 100-200 per hour, so that’s like 7 hours of extra work in a day (or even over how many days). Do you realize that GT users do NOT have breaks. This has become so apparent and I think the developers even realize it’s a major problem because their #1 advances are ways to make GT take much less time. All the new features are simply ideas to make GT less of a time suck… “We now have scheduled days off, vacation modes, ways to cap your daily questions, we can now make 20 questions into 1.” Lol.
GT got to greedy. GT was a fantastic program but it outgrew itself. When it was a simply copy of First Aid and didn’t try to be First Aid ++++++ (minutia), it was great. Now it determined that more information is better. I went through the immune section, you know how easy the cytokines are and can be? Very easy, you just need simple organization. In the end, cells usually have 2-3 major things they release, not 6. Well, GT tries to tell you all 6 and then you get those 6 all jumbled in your mind and you forget the major 2 or 3 (the 2 or 3 that are tested! And the 2 or 3 that are important). This goes for symptoms of diseases. Yes, every disease has 40 different symptoms and signs, BUT you really only need to know a handful or less. GT wants to list 7 or 8 things when you need to know 3. NOT HELPFUL. Now GT wants to be a Uworld and charge more. FAIL GT. FAIL. I find it very funny that LoOrganic2 made a new account just to stop this train wreck from happening and it is a train wreck. Guess what, FACTS are FACTS. I went over this in detail in one of my earlier posts and I think you should take the time to read the one with the figures, but doing well on this test comes down to UNDERSTANDING, THEN MEMORIZING, THEN APPLYING THE MATERIAL. You need all 3. You need to understand, memorize and apply. GT is basically only memory, yet they are trying to become an application type of service. Uworld on steroids according to Bchandler. Well, that’s a dumb idea because Uworld already exists. Look GT will make a lot of money but it’s not going to be useful any longer for AMGs because it’s trying to do too much. If you try to integrate 20 questions into 1 question, as Organic mentioned, you will remember the ANSWER – especially in the period of 12 months! There’s even a whole debate on this as to whether it’s useful to repeat qbanks, most people don’t think it is, but I do… YET the funny thing is, we are talking about doing a qbank maybe 2 or 3 times. Would it be useful to do a qbank 10 times!!!! NO! I don’t even think the repeat Qbank team would believe that, I certainly don’t. Well, how in the world would it be useful to use a qbank question 10 times over the course of the year.

Bchandler, you want to know what you should have focused on? Making your program more high yield. GT has focused so much on expansion when they should have focused on recession. How do we make GT more and more useful? By making the questions faster, concepts more high yield, etc. That would have been useful. Instead, the goal has been to just add more and more cards and be more comprehensive, then to add longer questions. Then they threw those into the daily reviews, which is when I KNEW I was out. Why? Because I knew I was banking a lot of trust by using this program 20 spanking hours a week on top of a full medical school schedule (I don’t think people can appreciate how ridiculous this is. GT is not a supplement to classes, it will rarely help at most schools. The fact that people post on here surprised that the thing was actually useful on a few question or 10-15% of an exam just shows how absurd the idea that it helps in class.
I think GT doesn’t need to be used as long as it does, and omitting certain sections is helpful (AGAIN another new feature that really is just a way of avoiding time suck). Being able to exclude certain topics and subtopics is a huge advancement and helpful, but it just goes to show what I said earlier if you read my post, the REASON THAT GT WORKS is that it allows you to force recall and then work on weaknesses, you don’t need to use GT over 24 months, the only reason you really do is because the information is formatted differently than you know and you haven’t truly been exposed to GT material. If you knew the concepts and material, you could probably run through GT in the matter of a few months… BUT you don’t and the thing you are doing when you bank cards is LEARNING the GT format or style of teaching a concept. Isn’t this really why people are asking to be able to format their own cards and make edits for tougher information? What you’re really asking GT is to be able to put the concepts in an organization or with a set of words that actually makes SENSE to you. That’s also why you repeat some cards 40 times and still get them incorrect! It’s because the information is either TOO LONG to recall (a huge GT problem also, there is no point in recalling lists longer than 3-4 things long – it’s very counter productive to try and remember lists of 7 or 8 things and to do that in random order everytime, i.e. recall #1,4,5,6,7,2,8 and then next time recall #4,1,5,6,8,7…. That’s murder, you want to recall lists in order, then they will stick better – isn’t that why mnemonics works? They are organized and ordered in an exact sequence. This is why those cytokine cards are so hard for you , there are too many and their sequence is non-sensical. Also, this is why some want to change the cards (as the above poster asked) or add notes to the cards. WELL That brings up another point, the NOTES are absolutely worthless. IF you have 300 questions or 1300! Lol, you are NOT going to read notes. This falls into the feature that seems awesome but is completely impractical. Guess what, when you are buring through 300 questions and you have an exam in a few days, do you honestly believe you going to check to see if there are notes by clicking once, then waiting for something to load, then clicking again to pull out the note, then searching through the note to see if you EVEN have a note? That’s right, you don’t even know if you have notes on cards… SO FUNNY. I mean, there have been so many times when I starting trying to create a note and found out that I already had a note. WELL, you don’t know if there are notes or not until you click and wait 5-10 seconds, WELL that’s a long time when you multiply it by 300 or 1300, it just isn’t practical. And this is where GT failed. Instead of thinking of ways to make what they have better, they’ve been focused on making Step 2 material and also Uworld style questions.

So what is my recommendation? I think GT is actually not very efficient. Yes it does work, just like ANY ACTION MULTIPLE HOURS A DAY ON STEP 1 MATERIAL WOULD DO, but it’s not an efficient study method. If you don’t believe then ask yourself this, how come all the problems I figured out about GT 3-4 months ago are now NEW FEATURES… I’m serious, I dropped this thing after a while and now they have realized (or just seen so many users drop the program… remember they have all kinds of data on how people use their program that we can’t see)… but they’ve realized that GT takes TOO LONG. Enter vacation mode, day off mode, limit questions mode, LITE mode (which is a piece of crap because it really just shorts you in essential areas – there are some concepts you don’t want LITE studying on), eliminate sub topics, eliminating entire categories…
All my criticisms centered around the idea that you don’t’ really have a forgetting curve that needs to be refreshed every 6 days or 30 days or whatever. In reality, if you took anatomy, then changed careers and WENT back to take anatomy 6 years later, you would do better and learn it faster… WHY? Shouldn’t you be at 0% or whatever according to the forgetting curve? In reality, your brain has ways of learning things and once it learns how to learn something, it can be picked up again VERY rapidly. Think about muscle memory. IF you hadn’t played a sport in 10 years, but then you go back and play it and the muscle memory is there bro, yeah you need to work into it for a few weeks, but your growth accelerates INCREDIBLY fast, much faster than a person who has never touched it before. Isn’t this the essence of board study since the beginning of boards. FIND A WAY TO GET EXPOSED TO BOARD PREP MATERIAL DURING THE YEAR, THEN DURING YOUR INTENSE or dedicated time, you have SEEN everything before and can pick it up incredibly fast. So kudus to GT for realizing that being able to completely eliminate categories and sub categories, that’s a major plus. YET, I would never use this program for this very reason. I would have had to wait like 8 months to get this ability, guess what, there will be other features you wish you had that will waste 5-10 of your 20 hours a week studying. Medical school and life is too busy to spend all that time inefficiently. I would LOVE to survey GT users and see what their physical health is and the amount of sleep they get or their relationships or social life. I’ve come to realize that a lot of these GT users are introverts that have NOTHING else to do but cards. Imagine you are at lunch at school and someone is compulsively doing cards everytime they get a free second, I mean, that’s cool, everyone can do what they want BUT it’s weird. And it’s dumb. I mean, you’ve now made your entire existence about doing well on an exam. There’ an IMG who is studying boards for like 1 year and you can see him obsessively studying… look people, you’re trying to achieve some goal to prove yourself or something to someone/or yourself but it’s pathetic… just do your best, the fact that people are stressed out and worried about doing cards all day is NOT a good thing. You want to work hard but not be a one dimensional person. I even read a GT user that finally decided to workout because they could listen to Goljan during the workouts. Lol. Someone has socialized you into believing how you perform on an exam or how USEFUL you are to other people should determine your value as a person. Be honest, if you got a 210 or a 260 you would feel amazing about yourself? Why? Because you don’t feel amazing about YOU as YOU are. You need the grade or the achievement to do this. These are a majority of the people who use GT and do well. Now of course, this isn’t nearly everyone but it is the type of person who can chug through so much nonsense on a daily basis and then convince themselves they aren’t doing that much. People have to constantly remind themselves how little time GT takes…. Because in reality it’s a huge time suck.

And these Uworld style questions are already starting to come in. They are terrible. I hope they scrap them for everyone sake but it doesn’t really matter to me. I use Anki and it does take LESS TIME. I remember after my post earlier someone mentioned that anki couldn’t take less time. LOL, yes it does. WHY? Because EVERY CARD is formatted by me. That means that it makes sense to me and I would never need to edit the cards. Think about this. People say that GT, they can do anywhere from 150-200 questions per hour, some say more but whatever. Well, how many questions do you think there are in GT? I think there are around 7000 or whatever. Well, that should technically only take 35 hrs. That means you could do all of GT in 3 intense days, and certainly could cover GT in a week or two. But you can’t because it’s all a foreign language to you. You didn’t learn the cards and the figures, so it’s all new. It’s like taking another class. Well, what I do is use First Aid which is much more condensed and then I make MANY MORE QUESTIONS… My biochem set was like 1200 questions but they are all SUPER short and anything with a list is asked multiple times, only asking recall of 3 things or so instead of 8 at a time (always in the same order). So, if I were to spend 2 hours a day making cards, I would easily make every card for M2 and my cards are wayyyy better than GT. Imagine being able to use any textbook image, figure, Wikipedia image, electronic textbooks or atlases, anything on your screen, those are the images I use. My hematology section has like 4-5 high resolution images of hemo slides from either Robbins, online hematology atlases or whatever. Wikipedia even has tons of amazing images. The point is this, First aid isn’t that long, it’s just SEEING and understanding everything in it takes time. Once that step is done it’s smooth sailing, all you have to do is commit it to memory and apply the info. Like I said, GT should technically be able to be completed within probably 30-40 hours which essentially is what a pass of first aid should take, well, you could make 3 passes in 6 weeks VERY easily. That’s all you need. You could even make 4-5 passes in that time technically while doing qbanks, the program doesn’t need to take years. By repeating so much crap you already know you waste time by not learning the M2 material as well. SO, you end up with all these memorized facts and less application and understanding… unless you are like these people who don’t date women, don’t workout or only workout to listen to goljan, and are generally unhealthy human beings. Medicine isn’t worth that. It’s better to work your ass off during M2 and dedicated prep and get a 240 or 250 than it is to eat breath and live this stuff to possibly exceed that. There are no guarantees. You could be like that one guy who worked his ass off for a year, skipped spring break for GT banking, and then got a 240. Well, you can get a 240 just cramming with FA and Uworld. GT could have been an excellent must have program if they kept their cards simple and worked on getting images for their cards (or more than they have). Instead they wanted to create new content because that’s easier than becoming high yield and finding quality pics. This company had promise but went the wrong way.
It’s a mistake to add step questions to the daily review. I think we’ve all told them this enough that they will listen. As for the NEW users, I would avoid this program like the plague. It’s a time suck and it really isn’t efficient in anyway. The best of both worlds is to make your own FA flash cards on Anki or don’t even use flash cards and just qbank the thing to death. Seriously, some people get 250 just working on M2, then 3 months before buying 3 qbanks and slamming it. You don’t need magic to do well on this exam. Be wary of those who score 270+ with this program. Honestly go read their reviews of the Step and ask yourself if you think these people had anywhere near a normal healthy life. It’s like this one user who banked 90% of GT during M1... and he said it didn’t take that long. LOL. Think about only adding 4 hours a day, ~30 hrs a week to M1 and then saying, oh yeah it didn’t take that long. Honestly I didn’t study much more than that, let alone only use GT that long. Bbagins I think? Anyway, these people are stuyding liek 70-80 hrs a week and taking NO DAYS OFF. They are probably overweight and single and compulsvie/stressed to be around. Doing questions everyday during lunch or whenever you have a free second, skipping vacation breaks to do GT, or doing GT on the toilet are NOT healthy and it’s totally funny when you do all that and get a 240 or whatever, while some other guy gets the same score with an intense 5 week prep. Don’t sell your humanity for the SHOT (not even guarantee) of doing slightly better on an exam.

Here is a link of one of these savants:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=12814665&postcount=2268

Best quote: I spent the first week of january catching up - 1000 questions a day/ this took ~ 3 hrs.... LOL, 333 questions an hour, please people, try to do 300 questions an hour for me so you can understand this.

This guy used: Lippincott biochem, langmans’ embryo, CMMRS, Robbins qbook, Robbins, Goljan RR path, Said costanza physiology textbook is a must read, Webpath, USMLERx, GT, Kaplan qbank, Uworld, Pathoma, etc. He said GT is the best, and I think it does help if you can do a million other things, but in reality, his score would have been similar without it. AND I truly believe GT is such a time suck that people convince themselves that it is good. As if spending 20 hrs a week for 1 year, or 1000 hours on something should in someone NOT be helpful. YOu have to believe it was good. It’s like admitting you married the wrong woman after your honeymoon. You don’t do that after you committed the time and money, you HAVE to believe it worked or is awesome to be a congruent human being. Your investment is too high to say it didn’t work. This is why almost NO ONE has anything bad to say about GT other than a few of us who tell it straight. I wasted so much time with this program.

Read his last quote, the difference between a 270 and 250 is ~15 questions. So you guys are going to completely dedicate your life to this for 15 more questions... lol. USE GT if you already have it but I would be careful about buying this program. You may not realize what you’re signing up for.

I actually hope you guys figure this out and I wish Bchandler the best, I hope they make this thing work better but I’m not going on this ride.

 

[MedicalStudent5]

I had typed out the previous response and then I figured that I could help and give some ideas to GT because I feel like Bchandler is a nice guy.

Before that, remember, you are NOT your f'ing step score.
[YOUTUBE]wo-wkv8gW6k[/YOUTUBE]

Seriously guys, get it together. This is just a test. Work hard but don't lose yourself in the process.

Solutions:

I think GT would be much better if you isolated everything. For example, FA has like 10 subjects or whatever, well... you should be able to just do biochemistry questions. This should be something where you have to check to exclude everythign, you should check to ADD. The default should be nothing. That way, if you have a bicohem class or test, you can ONLY do biochem review questions. Also, if you have a crazy period during M2, you can cycle off MOST of M1 during that crazy month. Does this eliminate the whole spaced repetition thing? Probably. But what does it matter, spaced reptition isn't why this thing works. Do an experiment. Be at 100% mastery then leave the stuff for 4 months, guess what, if you were really at 100% mastery then you would pick up that material VERY quickly, even if it was 2,3, or 10 month break. It doesn' matter. The DEPTH of learning leads to the recall... and stuff that is pure memory DOESN"T need to be hammered home for 2 years. There is no reason for that. SO having the ability to select was topics to study would be huge, down to to sub-category. This allows the crazy gunners who want to have everything going all the time to do it, and it allows the LITE users to ONLY DO M2 material during M2, and maybe bring M1 BACK UP TO SPEED... i.e. DO m1 during M1, but then bring it back up to speed maybe in march or something. This is ultimate flexibility and if it was around 6 months ago, I probably would have stuck around (to my detriment though because no joke, my cards are better than GT)... I think I say that not because I'm good at making cards, but simply because FA organizes stuff better than GT and also FIGURES are HUGE. Robbins FIGURES are huge and help me understand things so well, as do BRS physio or other figures. Understanding what a mast cell does with a top of the line figure of a mast cell from Junqueria or Robbins or whatever, or even hypersensitivity, that's huge. I think that would be the BEST feature of the new GT. In the end all this vacation or day off crap isn't the problem, that's a stem of the problem but it isn't really the problem. The problem is the LOAD is too high in the first place. Don't attack the branches, attack the root. The root is NOT having 300 quesitons a day. The ROOT is having 6000 questions in your bank. NO REASON TO DO THIS. It's a simple misunderstanding of learning, we don't need to review things we know 12 times a year. ESPECIALLY PURE MEMORY STUFF. The thing you guys get frustrated with, those hard to stick cards, are typically memory based stuff with little conceptuatl understanding. There is NO REASON to keep these churning for 2 years. Those are crammable during the last 4 weeks.

A huge implemenation of GT also could be card ghosting or something like that. An ability to ghost out or eliminate a card until a certain date. This would be exactly like what I'm talking about above, crammable topics don't need to be studied for 2 years. SO, create a way to eliminate single cards or pause the cards - kind of like the perfect recall button but better, perfect recall leaves forever, then you need to UNperfect recall ALL your perfect recalls. Instead you need to be able to do that for indiviudal cards and for certain time periods.

GT wish list also: You could also, if you had really great developers, find a way to add notes to a card. I know this is hard because you need to keep the cards consistent, but if you could some way type on to the actual card that owuld be huge. Like some editting overlay that types your own color or different colors based on the users choice. If you could do that then you could format the language of the hard cards into something understandable. THIS WOULD Be a GAME CHANGER. Right now the notes are useless. Like I said before, tyring to see a note by clicking multiple buttons in a set of 300 is silly an inefficient. You guys need to sit down with people - normal people who use the program a lot and figure out what makes the daily reviews faster (TRY SHORTER QUESTION STEMS TOO, LOL). You have a few question stems that are litterally paragraphs and could be a sentence. NEVER DO THAT in a spaced repetition or flashcard deck. THE WHOLE POINT is QUICK and FACT RECALL. The second you guys started with that question nonsense tells me that the people formatting the cards had NEVER been around a high end user, because no one in medical school would want a paragraph quesiton to ask for a simple fact. I think a huge thing too that helped me on my cards if cloze deletion method used by supermemo... you guys have lots of questions with a list of 7. Instead of asking the list of seven, ask for a different 3 everytime BUT keep them in the same order. So a quesiton may give away 4 of the symptoms but cloze delete 3. This is good because it makes the recall faster and helps you organize the info better. By showing a different 3 you get full coverage too, and if you are smart, you realize which are the MUST know symptoms and have those blanked out more often than not. That's how I set up my symptom cards and it is a really good idea (again I picked it up from Supermemo).

I hope these ideas help. I honestly can't endorse this program but it does have a lot of potential and I honestly believe that bchandler has a good business mind and heart, which is the only reason I took time to find positive solutions. Objectively right now I think the program is too time consuming to be useful and again, the figures and high yieldness of it is quesitonable at times.

LATER, good lucks guys. Do wish you all the best.

 

[GTP]

I agree with what's said above (at least what i decided to read out of the sea of words). I agree that spending 20 hours a week on ANYTHING would be efficient. But can I really carry around FA and bust it out while waiting in line at the Starbucks or do anything meaningful with it during a 30 min break? No. Gt allows that. I use it on my ipad. I only spend about 2 hours a day on gt, and its in between doing other stuff. It's time that would have been wasted otherwise

 

[Slack3r]

@thawundonly - you hit the nail on the head! Although we love the idea of caps, the main way we think we can best increase the efficiency of your study time is to ask you 1 integrative question rather than, say, 10 questions (1 for each concept).

Although we will initially launch Firecracker without caps or the hundreds of USMLE style questions our authors have already written, it's the first thing we are working right after launch since we think it will be the highest value to you guys! If we think about GT/FC as a tutor, what we have now is a slave driver that isn't always in touch with what you really need. But, by integrating the hundreds of USMLE like integrative questions we have (along with recall questions that also integrate material between and across topics), we will make FC a really awesome and smart tutor and not simply a spaced learning system. Spaced learning is great but adaptive spaced learning that shows you integrative questions when you're ready is much more efficient. 🙂

We will have the migration feature working later this week and will invite current beta testers at that time. Then when we're sure it works, we will invite everyone else! Sorry for the delay guys!

@loveoforganic2, please please stay on SDN. This is GREAT feedback. Totally agree with your concerns.

Your awesome feedback is making me think we should instead: 1) create a high yield option to reduce review burden for new users and 2) initially implement the USMLE style questions as a stand-alone question bank and then 3) include USMLE style questions into the review ONLY when you have achieved mastery of all related concepts (i.e. raise the bar for "unlocking" these USMLE style questions). Moreover, if we know your exam date, we can time the USMLE style questions for 2-3 months prior to your test. And, just so you know, we plan on having many thousands of USMLE style questions so the likelihood of repeating the same question will be lessened. And, once you've reached mastery of all related concepts and have unlocked a USMLE style question, we will still ask you recall questions that our system predicts you may forget (based on your performance and the performance of your peers on that related concept).

Since you brought up the high-yield option, I'd love you and other's feedback on how to best achieve this. We've actually already gone through our content and tagged things that we think are high yield (based on the insight of our authors who have scored 273, for example). But in the new world of a computerized USMLE, we worry that there may be some bias here since everyone's test is different these days (and likely to get increasingly so, we believe). Then again, we have so many authors/editors who scored really high so collectively what they believe is high yield is likely to really be HY. We also have many top residents writing content for us who are at places like MGH and BWH. They can provide their insight into what is HY as well, particularly for Step 2 / Shelfs / Clerkships.

Any opportunity for user feedback here? Any other ideas? Thanks for the awesome feedback guys! Let's figure this USMLE style question thing out together. I promise when you see them you will be impressed. Our guys (admittedly a little biased! 😉) say they are better than UWorld or Kaplan Qbank questions so we're really excited to get them to you no matter how we (FC + you guys!) end up choosing to do so!

I like having the individual fact questions. It's what I'm using GT for. Trying to turn it into some faux Q-bank/FA/longitudinal study material reduces GT's effectiveness. If you'd like to introduce boards style questions, please keep that as a secondary feature that we'd be able to turn on/off.

 

[Transformers]

I agree with you but once firecracker comes out ur points are invalid...more importantly gt is first aid to in the sense that both are memorybased sources...id rather use gt to learn first aid vs using first aid...more importantly i do in fact learn and make key associations with gt...gt is just a buzzword machine for me to regurgitate my weaknesses and strengths on a daily basis so by the time i do reach uworld im not worrying too much about the memory part as i am about applying and learning. So no need to criticize something so awesome...and heck yea im a gunner but i strive to be balanced and efficient daily with p90x...i do indeed skip path (use pathoma and webpath), time is indeed of the essence but hey things will work out

 

[Chirurg]

I would welcome true usmle-style questions, I don't mind whether they are in the daily review or separate.
also in regards to spending 20hours/wk on something, I would never spend 20 hours/week on first aid, another book or something that is not convenient and fun.
GT is fun for the most part, convenient, I can use it everywhere, I don't have to put in the effort of making my own card, I'm way too lazy for that.
also GT is like a cure for my ADHD, I can't put in the same amount of time in a book that I put into GT.
maybe there are a few features that I don't like about GT and I bitch about it on here,
but overall, I'm more than happy.

@bchandler
keep up the good work and the improvements.
and I'm glad you guys have recruited quality authors/content team.
I can see myself using GT throughout medschool and byond.

ps: it's amazing that you guys respond to feedback so well.