speed learning techniques

[puchacz]

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Hi,

I would like to bounce some ideas with you guys here to see if I am going in the right direction.

I would like to invite you to an experiment on collaborative online learning on the http://buboflash.eu website that I created. It uses statistical model of your memory to make sure you have very high knowledge retention (like 98%) and you learn about 20 times faster than traditionally from books alone.

All learning material is free of charge and under Creative Commons licence or comes from publicily available webpages.

This is how I did it:

In BuboFlash knowledge is represented as flashcards (cards with question and anwser). When you learn a new flashcard, your memory strength - defined as probability of recall - starts decaying in time. The longer you wait, the lower probability of recall is. However, if you manage to repeat it while you still remember it, the memory strength is reset back to original 100% (certain recall, you just recalled it after all) and it starts decaying slower, so you remember the flashcard for longer. Each successful repetition makes subsequent memory decay slower, so BuboFlash can increase intervals between repetitions - 1 day, 3 days, a week, 10 days, a month etc. You can easily learn 1,000 new flashcards per month or new 10,000 flashcards per year, working with BuboFlash about 40 minutes a day.

No time wasted on repeating things you still know well. No frustration of forgetting too much.
You will repeat only what you need and only when you need it.

I am well aware that what I described is known as Spaced Repetition Software - I have been an active user of many systems (mostly Supermemo) for nearly 20 years myself. There are even programs targetting specifically medical students: Firecracker, formerly Gunner Training, or students selling their Anki decks, a new startup called Enki Learning, Osmosis, and the New England Journal of Medicine's "Knowledge+".

BUT

I found all these programs inappropriate for lifelong learning, which is utterly annoying. You can't collaborate on creating knowledge there effectively or at all. For me it was always like learn something, then drop it. Never all-encompassing, primary study tool. I tried to solve it on BuboFlash by letting everybody edit everything and storing all versions. Then I let users bookmark which version they like most. Wikipedia is also crowdsourced but in Wikipedia it is always the last version that wins, which is unacceptable for learning, people would overwrite each other's versions. On one hand, you would be surprised during repetitions to see something different than what you learned, and on the other hand, you may want to get latest changes from somebody else.

Next thing was the source of flashcards themselves. Of course you can buy them, but come on, it is inflexible, and often tied to a specific program. And the Web is full of extremly valuable learning material. My bet is on incremental reading as a source for flashcards, which works as follows:

• you read the web and highlight interesting passages
• you review previously highlighted passages - it is a priority list, not a date based scheduler like with flashcards,
• when reviewing passively you will notice that you start losing context and your understanding starts to fade, so:
• if you really want to remember them, convert them into flashcards by hiding some parts of the text and start repeating them seriously as described above.

Incremental reading is both a source for flashcards and a study tool on its own.

Let me emphasise it, whatever you guys create - I don't claim it, it is yours. You can share it by default on BuboFlash, and for tech-minded people, I can export it as JSON, so you can do whatever you want with it, no problem here.

It is almost summer holiday time, so if I get enough feedback, I will have enough time to make it a killer app before next semester 🙂

Cheers,
Piotr (aka puchacz)

PS. I am a real person who wrote buboflash, not an anonymous face of a company, you can mail me directly: piotr.wasik [at] gmail.com or discuss your ideas here.

The screenshots:

1. Annotate an article

2. Make flashcards (on the right) by hiding some parts in annotation itself:

3. Repeat the flashcard

 

[ChrisGriffen]

...

 

[Psai]

This looks low yield

 

[chronicidal]

This is huge. Combining an incremental reading platform with spaced repetition allows you to take, for instance, an online copy of course materials or a review book and collaboratively make flashcards, which are shown in the context of the page. This could be like a crowd-sourced Firecracker, but free and Free, and also adaptable to local circumstances, allowing curricular innovators to run with it as well.

Think about it. ANY page on the internet can have buboflash cards linked to it, created by the crowd and not dependent on the page authors.

If there's cross compatibility with other SRS, like Anki, this could be a big thing.

 

[DermViser]

Hi,

I would like to bounce some ideas with you guys here to see if I am going in the right direction.

I would like to invite you to an experiment on collaborative online learning on the http://buboflash.eu website that I created. It uses statistical model of your memory to make sure you have very high knowledge retention (like 98%) and you learn about 20 times faster than traditionally from books alone.

All learning material is free of charge and under Creative Commons licence or comes from publicily available webpages.

This is how I did it:

In BuboFlash knowledge is represented as flashcards (cards with question and anwser). When you learn a new flashcard, your memory strength - defined as probability of recall - starts decaying in time. The longer you wait, the lower probability of recall is. However, if you manage to repeat it while you still remember it, the memory strength is reset back to original 100% (certain recall, you just recalled it after all) and it starts decaying slower, so you remember the flashcard for longer. Each successful repetition makes subsequent memory decay slower, so BuboFlash can increase intervals between repetitions - 1 day, 3 days, a week, 10 days, a month etc. You can easily learn 1,000 new flashcards per month or new 10,000 flashcards per year, working with BuboFlash about 40 minutes a day.

No time wasted on repeating things you still know well. No frustration of forgetting too much.
You will repeat only what you need and only when you need it.

I am well aware that what I described is known as Spaced Repetition Software - I have been an active user of many systems (mostly Supermemo) for nearly 20 years myself. There are even programs targetting specifically medical students: Firecracker, formerly Gunner Training, or students selling their Anki decks, a new startup called Enki Learning, Osmosis, and the New England Journal of Medicine's "Knowledge+".

BUT

I found all these programs inappropriate for lifelong learning, which is utterly annoying. You can't collaborate on creating knowledge there effectively or at all. For me it was always like learn something, then drop it. Never all-encompassing, primary study tool. I tried to solve it on BuboFlash by letting everybody edit everything and storing all versions. Then I let users bookmark which version they like most. Wikipedia is also crowdsourced but in Wikipedia it is always the last version that wins, which is unacceptable for learning, people would overwrite each other's versions. On one hand, you would be surprised during repetitions to see something different than what you learned, and on the other hand, you may want to get latest changes from somebody else.

Next thing was the source of flashcards themselves. Of course you can buy them, but come on, it is inflexible, and often tied to a specific program. And the Web is full of extremly valuable learning material. My bet is on incremental reading as a source for flashcards, which works as follows:

• you read the web and highlight interesting passages
• you review previously highlighted passages - it is a priority list, not a date based scheduler like with flashcards,
• when reviewing passively you will notice that you start losing context and your understanding starts to fade, so:
• if you really want to remember them, convert them into flashcards by hiding some parts of the text and start repeating them seriously as described above.

Incremental reading is both a source for flashcards and a study tool on its own.

Let me emphasise it, whatever you guys create - I don't claim it, it is yours. You can share it by default on BuboFlash, and for tech-minded people, I can export it as JSON, so you can do whatever you want with it, no problem here.

It is almost summer holiday time, so if I get enough feedback, I will have enough time to make it a killer app before next semester 🙂

Cheers,
Piotr (aka puchacz)

PS. I am a real person who wrote buboflash, not an anonymous face of a company, you can mail me directly: piotr.wasik [at] gmail.com or discuss your ideas here.

The screenshots:

1. Annotate an article

2. Make flashcards (on the right) by hiding some parts in annotation itself:

3. Repeat the flashcard

Isn't this what Anki, Gunner Training, and Firecracker are?

 

[Silent Cool]

Hi,

I would like to bounce some ideas with you guys here to see if I am going in the right direction.

I would like to invite you to an experiment on collaborative online learning on the http://buboflash.eu website that I created. It uses statistical model of your memory to make sure you have very high knowledge retention (like 98%) and you learn about 20 times faster than traditionally from books alone.

All learning material is free of charge and under Creative Commons licence or comes from publicily available webpages.

This is how I did it:

In BuboFlash knowledge is represented as flashcards (cards with question and anwser). When you learn a new flashcard, your memory strength - defined as probability of recall - starts decaying in time. The longer you wait, the lower probability of recall is. However, if you manage to repeat it while you still remember it, the memory strength is reset back to original 100% (certain recall, you just recalled it after all) and it starts decaying slower, so you remember the flashcard for longer. Each successful repetition makes subsequent memory decay slower, so BuboFlash can increase intervals between repetitions - 1 day, 3 days, a week, 10 days, a month etc. You can easily learn 1,000 new flashcards per month or new 10,000 flashcards per year, working with BuboFlash about 40 minutes a day.

No time wasted on repeating things you still know well. No frustration of forgetting too much.
You will repeat only what you need and only when you need it.

I am well aware that what I described is known as Spaced Repetition Software - I have been an active user of many systems (mostly Supermemo) for nearly 20 years myself. There are even programs targetting specifically medical students: Firecracker, formerly Gunner Training, or students selling their Anki decks, a new startup called Enki Learning, Osmosis, and the New England Journal of Medicine's "Knowledge+".

BUT

I found all these programs inappropriate for lifelong learning, which is utterly annoying. You can't collaborate on creating knowledge there effectively or at all. For me it was always like learn something, then drop it. Never all-encompassing, primary study tool. I tried to solve it on BuboFlash by letting everybody edit everything and storing all versions. Then I let users bookmark which version they like most. Wikipedia is also crowdsourced but in Wikipedia it is always the last version that wins, which is unacceptable for learning, people would overwrite each other's versions. On one hand, you would be surprised during repetitions to see something different than what you learned, and on the other hand, you may want to get latest changes from somebody else.

Next thing was the source of flashcards themselves. Of course you can buy them, but come on, it is inflexible, and often tied to a specific program. And the Web is full of extremly valuable learning material. My bet is on incremental reading as a source for flashcards, which works as follows:

• you read the web and highlight interesting passages
• you review previously highlighted passages - it is a priority list, not a date based scheduler like with flashcards,
• when reviewing passively you will notice that you start losing context and your understanding starts to fade, so:
• if you really want to remember them, convert them into flashcards by hiding some parts of the text and start repeating them seriously as described above.

Incremental reading is both a source for flashcards and a study tool on its own.

Let me emphasise it, whatever you guys create - I don't claim it, it is yours. You can share it by default on BuboFlash, and for tech-minded people, I can export it as JSON, so you can do whatever you want with it, no problem here.

It is almost summer holiday time, so if I get enough feedback, I will have enough time to make it a killer app before next semester 🙂

Cheers,
Piotr (aka puchacz)

PS. I am a real person who wrote buboflash, not an anonymous face of a company, you can mail me directly: piotr.wasik [at] gmail.com or discuss your ideas here.

The screenshots:

1. Annotate an article

2. Make flashcards (on the right) by hiding some parts in annotation itself:

3. Repeat the flashcard

 

[HopefulSpartan]

Isn't this what Anki, Gunner Training, and Firecracker are?

Seems like it except firecracker has all the "work" of creating the resource done

 

[puchacz]

This looks low yield

The yield is actually very high.

It can be computed (using human forgetting model) that expected number of equally spaced repetitions over long time (like whole life) is about 50 times greater than for optimally spaced repetitions. It means that the maximum yield on invested time is 50 times greater than in traditional learning. It is the theoretical maximum and when I was checking actual people's experience and learning histories (mostly myself and my friends), the speedup was from 1.5 to 20 times in comparison to traditional learning.

The longer you learn and the more you memorise, the higher your efficiency is. For short term cramming however, like 3 days before exam, you have virtually no gain, as first repetition is scheduled between 1 and 3 days, so the algorithm will have no time to "kick-in".

 

[puchacz]

Seems like it except firecracker has all the "work" of creating the resource done

... or, you can say that with Buboflash the whole internet is your resource 🙂 The only extra work you (or your friends) need to put into it is to highlight what you are interested in.

Personally I found the concept of "deck" pretty limiting - I have no decks, just search results that you can memorise from, which work like dynamic decks. Like with books - when I was studying, I never read textbooks from cover to cover, I just went for a chapter here, some examples there and added photocopied notes to it. I like to pick, mix and match.

Also, I found somebody else's notes on margins in books valuable - this is why I made everything editable in Buboflash and everybody can see everybody else's notes.

As of Anki, I want to cooperate with it - I have plans to write exporting facility in Buboflash, and if somebody requests data before I am done with the exporter, I have no problem with exporting it manually. Sadly we cannot cooperate with proprietary flashcard decks providers.

 

[Anastomoses]

... or, you can say that with Buboflash the whole internet is your resource 🙂 The only extra work you (or your friends) need to put into it is to highlight what you are interested in.

Personally I found the concept of "deck" pretty limiting - I have no decks, just search results that you can memorise from, which work like dynamic decks. Like with books - when I was studying, I never read textbooks from cover to cover, I just went for a chapter here, some examples there and added photocopied notes to it. I like to pick, mix and match.

Also, I found somebody else's notes on margins in books valuable - this is why I made everything editable in Buboflash and everybody can see everybody else's notes.

As of Anki, I want to cooperate with it - I have plans to write exporting facility in Buboflash, and if somebody requests data before I am done with the exporter, I have no problem with exporting it manually. Sadly we cannot cooperate with proprietary flashcard decks providers.

Could you in 3 sentences or less explain what this program offers and how much work is required by the user before they can actually start the retention process?

I had the same thought as the guy above - Firecracker has already (though sloppily) done the work for the user.

 

[puchacz]

The quickest way to get flashcards and active repetitions will be to skip incremental reading altogether:

1. You read the web in built-in browser.
2. You highlight what you consider interesting and hit "Add simple annotation".
3. You open the annotation in Full view - now you have the annotation on screen instead of the webpage.
4. You highlight parts that you want to be hidden and click "Add cloze flashcards", then M+ to memorise it, see the screenshot here: http://buboflash.eu/static5/app/images/incremental-reading/whim-syndrome-name.png

I personally like incremental reading and I would use "reading queue" between creating annotations and creating flashcards out of them, but I realise incremental reading is not a popular concept yet, so if you want - just skip it.

I would say - just take a plunge and I will hold your hand, haha. Whenever you get stuck I can help you, just make sure you put valid email address when you register your user.

 

[puchacz]

Foot massage is a dangerous territory, my friend. If you ask random men for it, Marcellus Wallace may propose to you. His wife liked it.

 

[puchacz]

My current favourite is the annotated article on glycolisis: http://buboflash.eu/bubo5/browser?url=http://glycolysis.co.uk - you need to log in to see it. bravo Allojay!

R+ means add annotation to reading queue
M+ means memorise a flashcard.

 

[Brain Bucket]

I think it's a pretty good idea, especially for shelves. Right now, I have too many resources going for the step, but I'll give it a whirl for my first two rotations and their respective shelves. You know you're gonna need an (droid first please, not isheep) app (with push notification, for the love of god) if you want this to take off. You'll also need to be able to import decks (I assume you can already do that).

 

[tco]

This is a brilliant idea. Fantastic job.

 

[allojay]

I'm still testing it out and getting a feel for it. But so far, I like it.

 

[tco]

I'm curious, does this program actually save the text? Can I use it for uptodate when I'm in the hospital, and return home to study from my saved cards?

 

[puchacz]

Sure, every change is saved on the server, not on the computer you use. If you edit something in the hospital and log in later from home, you will see the same texts and your learning schedule, no worries.

Under the hood it is slightly more complex to let users cooperate and prevent trolls from ruining other people's flashcards; you don't have to worry about the exact mechanism in most cases.

It works like this:

Nothing is actually overwritten, everything is saved as a separate version. If you see flashcard or annotation in fullview, you will see there is "Versions" tab. If you edit something, the version you save is by default bookmarked by your username so it is loaded as a first priority, no matter what other people change. If you like somebody else's changes, you can go to "Version" tab and bookmark it there. You can bookmark versions without editing as well. If you do not have any bookmarked version, buboflash loads the latest version (this is how Wikipedia works).

 

[puchacz]

OK, I added searches so you can check what other people are doing and "follow" them; just go to Communicate / Find others to learn with. For example go to: http://buboflash.eu/bubo5/user/Allojay and click "My flashcards" and "My annotations". The idea of "following" is to let you easily run searches for people that you choose to, emm, "follow". On any search, e.g. http://buboflash.eu/bubo5/find-annotation-comment-by-word you have "edited by" checkbox and you can choose "all users I follow". And, if you want to find me, I am here: http://buboflash.eu/bubo5/user/PiotrWasik - but I am learning finance and java, not medicine....

 

[fuzzytoad]

Not sure what your future plans are for this webapp, but if you plan on commercializing, I would axe the requirement for reading within the built-in browser and work with existing browers' APIs. Evernote has a similar annotation system on chrome and the transition cost for me is simply too high, despite whatever value your system might add.

Also, I would seriously condense the how-to-use section on your website - as it is now it probably contributes to a high bounce rate on your homepage. I suspect that your concept can be communicated much more elegantly through diagrams and point-form sentences than screenshots and pictures. If it isn't, I would consider rolling back a few features and thinking through what your MVP really is.

Of course, if you're just doing this for fun, awesome job.

 

[puchacz]

I see what you mean about complex tutorial - I started learning finance and I started documenting what I do on youtube, you can subscribe to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDv7pMAKXZOBX1Ny6gpHd0w/videos I am not Steven Spielberg yet and the screencast are too long, but I am slowly getting better at them 🙂

I think you are right about the learning page, a lot of text there can be cut, I will try.

 

[puchacz]

I'm still testing it out and getting a feel for it. But so far, I like it.

Hey Allojay, you are featured in this movie! I referred to you as if you were a male - if you are not, let me know so I will correct it 🙂

 

[puchacz]

Hey guys,

It has been a while but I am studying with Buboflash myself now; I realise learning Scala programming language is as far from medicine as you can get 🙄, but still it may be helpful to see how to formulate annotations and flashcards. You don't even need to log in, you can browse here: http://buboflash.eu/bubo5/whats-new-days Because I was studying from a pdf book, I was using tags like p123 to indicate book page number. If you are logged in, you can sort by these tags. Anyway, the "what's new" list is really only limited to browsing, when you are logged in you can search by words, tags, sort by newest or oldest to follow somebody, or by priority on your reading list. New school year is coming fast!

Cheers,
Piotr (puchacz)