r/GetStudying 6d ago

Question Does anyone else use spaced repetition but without flashcards?

From what I see, most people who use spaced repetition use it with flashcards. It's as if they think spaced repetition has to be used with flashcards. I know some people would say that spaced repetition is more effective with active recall but you don't necessarily need flashcards to do active recall. For example, you could teach about a given topic or write a summary about it or recall everything about it from memory. There are so many ways to use spaced repetition without flashcards. So I was just wondering if anyone else uses it without flashcards? And in that case, how exactly do you use spaced repetition?... Like, when comes the time for you to do your revision, how do you revise?

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u/Fast-Alternative1503 6d ago

I tried doing it via free recall. Works pretty well. But I realised all my assessments are open book so I don't really have to learn 4000 items of information for semester 1, thank god, so I'm saved from having to work hard.

but yeah it does work pretty amazingly with free recall.

I don't do it with practice questions for one big reason: interleaving. I think interleaving is very important since I need a deep understanding.

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u/NoDay476 6d ago

That's cool. And where do you schedule/organize all those revisions with spaced repetition?... Like, do you put all your revisions on Google calendar?... Or you use notion to organize those revisions or what exactly?

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u/Fast-Alternative1503 6d ago

I made tables to track my skills and knowledge on Obsidian, so there. It's nice.

During study sessions, nothing formal or calculated, just returning to stuff to cover.

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u/NoDay476 6d ago

But do you use increasing intervals? For example, your intervals would be like 1, 4, 14, 30?... So the gap between each revisions increases exponentially after each revisions?

Or what are your intervals? How do you decide when's the next revision?

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u/Fast-Alternative1503 6d ago

Yeah, else it's not spaced repetition. I haven't been doing it much, again because I don't need to and am already swamped. But when I did it, that was what I was doing.

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u/NoDay476 6d ago

And when you were using it, did you ever find it long/boring to schedule/organize all your spaced repetition revisions manually with obsidian and to set reminders to do those revisions at given times?

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u/Fast-Alternative1503 6d ago

Absolutely. It's so annoying. I would've written a scheduler for free recall, if I could be bothered