Concept
Active Recall
Active recall means pulling things out of your head: you bring up the answer yourself instead of just reading it again.
- 1
Discover
In “For you” you see content from the community that matches your interests, like a story about a book. Whatever grabs you, you borrow.
Discover
In “For you” you see content from the community that matches your interests, like a story about a book. Whatever grabs you, you borrow.
- 2
Rate
In “Yours” the story comes back. You see it again and say honestly how well it sticks.
Rate
In “Yours” the story comes back. You see it again and say honestly how well it sticks.
- 3
Remember
From your answer, Mnemorya works out when you’ll start to forget it and brings it back just before. The curve stays high, all the way to the butterfly.
Remember
From your answer, Mnemorya works out when you’ll start to forget it and brings it back just before. The curve stays high, all the way to the butterfly.
Active recall means actively bringing something back to mind. You close the book and ask yourself: what did it say again? It is like a path through the woods. The more often you walk it yourself, the clearer it gets. Just looking at the card is not enough.
In 2006 Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke in the USA ran an experiment with students. One group read a text several times. The other read it once and then wrote down what they still knew. After a week, the writing group still knew 61 %, the reading group only 40 %. The funny part: the reading group believed they had remembered more.
Rereading feels good because everything seems familiar. But familiar is not the same as known. When you have to remember by yourself, you practice exactly what you will need later in the exam or in a conversation.
Every Flashcard in Mnemorya first shows you only the question. You try to remember, also as a free answer that gets checked. Only then do you see the answer and rate how it went.
The research behind it
The studies this method rests on. Each one is verifiable through its DOI — looking them up is very much the point.
People who read a text once and then quiz themselves know much more a week later than people who read it several times.
Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.
doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.xQuizzing themselves helped students more than drawing concept maps, even on tasks that required understanding.
Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775.
doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327
Keep watching
See the idea in motion.
Selected videos for going deeper. Each link opens the original creator on YouTube.
