Is it effective to use anki cards made by someone else?

[deleted647690]

I mostly use anki cards to review psyc/soc terms, but the cards I made were literally just copy/paste from the khan academy notes document found on the mcat subreddit (so they are not that great, because it's basically just the 300 pg document spread out in anki card form)

So I downloaded someone else's cards, and I'm finding that the majority of the time, I don't know what their cloze deletion cards are referencing to. About 75% of the time, after I reveal the term that was "clozed", I realize how it fits in with the card.

The other 25% of the time, the term is something I don't really recall ever covering.

I also usually spend time with each card googling terms and relooking at discussions people have had on these forums about that topic.

Is this effective? I honestly don't have much of an alternative at this point, since my personal deck is not all that great in my opinion.


Also, I have noticed that I am somewhat familiar with the card even if I don't know what the clozed term is. It's like the term is sort of on the tip of my tongue, but I don't know exactly what it is. I feel like I'd be able to recognize the term on the actual MCAT multiple choice format exam, but the way anki works is through cued recall, so I guess it's harder than the actual mcat.

@mehc012

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[Doctor or bust]

I think that it is way more effective to make your own Anki cards.

borrowing a classmates notes for a test is good.
making your own notes and then studying them for a test is better.

 

[Gilakend]

People often word things so they understand them. I'm sure some of my notecards would make no sense to some people but they make perfect sense to me. I try to seldom use cloze deletions because it's so easy to just scan for buzz words, cloze them and move on. Typing it and sometimes saying (obviously just like mouthing it not screaming) makes it stick so much more.