5 ms·

Making your own cards is a very important step

comfypotato 4y ago
Science says otherwise. Saw a study with no significant difference between the people who made decks and people who used premade decks. Too lazy to get source, sorry.
- rjh29 4y ago
  My deck has 10,000 hand-made cards and I know for sure they stick in my brain easier than cards from a premade deck that I have no connection with. I suspect it depends how you make the deck. I intentionally use sentences and images that I care about. It only matters for the first few reviews though, even a premade card can be forced into my mind with enough effort.
  - firsttimebigboy 4y ago
    probably depends on the type of material too. if it's purely memorization (e.g., I'm learning spanish as an english speaker) then there's probably no difference. If it involves any sort of understanding then I'd be very surprised if there was no difference, at least in speed of learning
atahanacar 4y ago
No. As a med student who uses Anki for basically everything, this is plain wrong. The time spent on making cards is better spent on studying. Premade cards (Anking in this case) have relevant pages from multiple sources, relevant histology/gross photos and additional notes for every card, and all cards are tagged with their corresponding chapters in multiple textbooks. If I spent time trying to do something similar (and even without the tags) I'd have no time left to actually study. The only use case I can think of where making cards yourself would be better is sentence mining while learning a language, because these cards depend on context and creation doesn't take more than a few seconds even when adding images.
- SpaceManNabs 4y ago
  yes if you are trying to memorize facts and reference material and maybe even language, then yes, using premade cards are probably chill. especially if all the material is standard. if you are reading abstract stuff or more novel stuff that people are still understanding, then your own breakdown and understanding used to make cards is incredibly more helpful. If i was learning differential calculus, someone's analogies and metaphors of cards would not be understandable to me at all. i have to admit i added my own bias here so thank you for expanding.
  - atahanacar 4y ago
    >i have to admit i added my own bias here so thank you for expanding. Same here, thank you. I don't know much about other topics. I use Anki for med school and language learning, both of which have great premade decks. But I think I can see now why creating your own decks can be more useful for abstract stuff. Kind of like that memorization method where you create stories related to things you are trying to memorize. It only works when you are the one who created the story.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  >Premade cards (Anking in this case) have relevant pages from multiple sources, relevant histology/gross photos and additional notes for every card, and all cards are tagged with their corresponding chapters in multiple textbooks. Most premade decks are nowhere near as good as the medical school ones.
- MichaelNolan 4y ago
  Med school is a bit of an outlier, because they have high quality shared decks. Most subjects have very low quality shared decks. I don’t think any other subject at all has a shared deck that’s of similar quality to what AnKing provides for the medical community. Geography/maps have some good shared decks as well.
  - atahanacar 4y ago
    I don't know about other subjects, so I can't comment on that. I use Anki for med school and language learning, and both have high quality decks. I guess I'm lucky.
Kelamir 4y ago
That depends on topic. It doesn't make sense for medschool students or for people just studying vocabulary. Additionally, if there's a high quality deck such as https://dojgdeck.neocities.org/ https://dojgdeck.neocities.org/ , which is a grammar deck for Japanese, it is preferred to use them - if anything, you can extend them with what makes your own cards special, such as mnemonics.

Science says otherwise. Saw a study with no significant difference between the people who made decks and people who used premade decks. Too lazy to get source, sorry.

rjh29 4y ago
My deck has 10,000 hand-made cards and I know for sure they stick in my brain easier than cards from a premade deck that I have no connection with. I suspect it depends how you make the deck. I intentionally use sentences and images that I care about. It only matters for the first few reviews though, even a premade card can be forced into my mind with enough effort.
- firsttimebigboy 4y ago
  probably depends on the type of material too. if it's purely memorization (e.g., I'm learning spanish as an english speaker) then there's probably no difference. If it involves any sort of understanding then I'd be very surprised if there was no difference, at least in speed of learning

atahanacar 4y ago

No. As a med student who uses Anki for basically everything, this is plain wrong. The time spent on making cards is better spent on studying. Premade cards (Anking in this case) have relevant pages from multiple sources, relevant histology/gross photos and additional notes for every card, and all cards are tagged with their corresponding chapters in multiple textbooks. If I spent time trying to do something similar (and even without the tags) I'd have no time left to actually study. The only use case I can think of where making cards yourself would be better is sentence mining while learning a language, because these cards depend on context and creation doesn't take more than a few seconds even when adding images.

SpaceManNabs 4y ago
yes if you are trying to memorize facts and reference material and maybe even language, then yes, using premade cards are probably chill. especially if all the material is standard. if you are reading abstract stuff or more novel stuff that people are still understanding, then your own breakdown and understanding used to make cards is incredibly more helpful. If i was learning differential calculus, someone's analogies and metaphors of cards would not be understandable to me at all. i have to admit i added my own bias here so thank you for expanding.
- atahanacar 4y ago
  >i have to admit i added my own bias here so thank you for expanding. Same here, thank you. I don't know much about other topics. I use Anki for med school and language learning, both of which have great premade decks. But I think I can see now why creating your own decks can be more useful for abstract stuff. Kind of like that memorization method where you create stories related to things you are trying to memorize. It only works when you are the one who created the story.
_dain_ 4y ago
>Premade cards (Anking in this case) have relevant pages from multiple sources, relevant histology/gross photos and additional notes for every card, and all cards are tagged with their corresponding chapters in multiple textbooks. Most premade decks are nowhere near as good as the medical school ones.
MichaelNolan 4y ago
Med school is a bit of an outlier, because they have high quality shared decks. Most subjects have very low quality shared decks. I don’t think any other subject at all has a shared deck that’s of similar quality to what AnKing provides for the medical community. Geography/maps have some good shared decks as well.
- atahanacar 4y ago
  I don't know about other subjects, so I can't comment on that. I use Anki for med school and language learning, and both have high quality decks. I guess I'm lucky.

Kelamir 4y ago

That depends on topic. It doesn't make sense for medschool students or for people just studying vocabulary. Additionally, if there's a high quality deck such as https://dojgdeck.neocities.org/ https://dojgdeck.neocities.org/ , which is a grammar deck for Japanese, it is preferred to use them - if anything, you can extend them with what makes your own cards special, such as mnemonics.