- Hi, I'm Fred.
- I'm Caroline.
- And I'm Juan.
- We're medical students
at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Today we'll be providing an overview of Anki,
a powerful electronic flashcard program.
We will first learn about Anki's space repetition algorithm
and how to create and review cards.
Then we'll dive into using Anki on multiple platforms,
utilizing shared decks, and the art of suspending tags.
Finally, we'll learn about keyboard shortcuts,
add-ons for the application, and other helpful tactics
to maximize Anki's effectiveness.
Underlying Anki is a special spaced repetition algorithm
that functions to show you only the flashcards
that you're most at risk of forgetting.
By reviewing only a select amount of cards in a given deck
instead of all of the cards, you'll study more efficiently
and likely improve your retention.
This graph shows a visual representation
of the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus'
famous forgetting curve for newly learned information.
When information is immediately learned,
retention might be as high as 100%,
but then drops precipitously
until that information is reviewed or rehearsed again.
While those reviews could conceivably
take place every day or multiple times a day,
there is a more efficient strategy that exists.
Enter spaced repetition, in which those those reviews
take place only after a gradually increasing
time interval has elapsed.
In this graph the information is reviewed
one day after initially being learned,
then two days later, and then four days later.
As the information is correctly recalled
retention shoots back up to about 100%
and the interval increases as fewer reviews are needed.
While the inner workings
of the spaced repetition algorithm with Anki
are beyond the scope of this video,
they function similarly to this graph
with increasing time intervals
as information is correctly recalled.
The two foundational note types built into Anki,
basic and close, will likely be sufficient
for most uses of the software.
Although other modifications can be made,
such as changing the visual formatting of notes
and adding additional fields,
they are outside the scope of this video.
Although we will be covering the use of tags later on.
A new deck can be created by clicking on Create Deck
on the main screen of Anki.
New notes can then be added to this deck
by selecting the deck and then clicking Add on the top row
or pressing A on your keyboard.
In the Add Note window you can select the note type,
basic or closed, select the deck
to which the note and it's cards will be added
and perform some minor formatting.
For our basic note we will simply enter
a term or a question on the front side of the note
and the definition or answer on the back side.
At the bottom of the screen,
tags can also be assigned to this note
to help distinguish notes based on
subject, lecture or topics.
As we'll soon learn, these tags can then be used
to selectively study particular cards within a deck
or remove those cards from being reviewed.
(keyboard clicking)
And to add a card, I will either press Add
or Command Enter on Macs, or Control Enter on PCs.
Close note type cards will remove a section
of a sentence or phrase and ask you to fill in the blank.
Within the Add Card window, first select
the section you wish to delete.
And then either click this icon on the Menu bar
or use the keyboard shortcut Command Shift C on Macs
or Control Shift C on PCs.
A hint can also be provided to add specificity to the card
by using the double colon notation
following the closed deletion.
You can also imbed multiple closed deletions
within a single note, which will produce different cards
based on which closed deletions are shown.
For instance, if I were to add a second closed deletion here
there would be one card for the first closed deletion
and one card for the second closed deletion.
Each of which come from this single note.
Now, let's review the new cards we just added
as well as older cards I've already made
to preview the process of reviewing.
Again, the basic type cards function similarly
to a physical flash card that have a front and back side.
When this card is first displayed,
by default we only see the front side.
When I have successfully recalled
the correct response or have given up,
I will trigger the back side of the card to be shown
by clicking Show Answer or pressing the Space bar
or Enter on the keyboard.
Depending on whether I correctly recall the contents
I have three options to evaluate the difficulty of the card.
If I forgot or incorrectly recalled the content
I would select Again and be shown the card
within a one minute interval.
Which is what the small number refers to
above the Again button.
In this case the card moves from new status
to relearning status.
The amount of relearning cards is shown in red
as you'll see shortly.
If I recalled the content correctly,
I would select either Good
and be shown the card within a 10 minute interval
or Easy and only be presented with that card
after a four day interval.
Both Good and Easy leave the card
to graduate from new to review status.
These timed intervals are determined by calculations
within the spaced repetition algorithm used by Anki
and can be adjusted from their default settings
if so desired by more advanced users.
When a new card that was just evaluated as Good
is presented again, the same three options are displayed.
If the card is rated Good again,
this review card will only be shown after one day,
and if the card is Easy, after four days.
If the content cannot be recalled or is recalled incorrectly
the card would again enter relearning status
and be shown within a one minute interval.
For this closed deletion card the process is much the same.
When I believe I have correctly recalled the content
or have given up, I will either press
Show Answer, Space bar, or Enter.
The difficulty of these new cards are evaluated
the same to the previous example.
When the time interval previously assigned to review cards
has elapsed, they become Due
and are expected to be reviewed.
In this demo deck I have one basic card and one closed card.
If these due cards are not reviewed on that given day
and more cards become due in the subsequent days
the overall volume of cards to review quickly builds.
Thus, reviewing Anki on a daily basis is critical
to its successful use and for long term retention.
In these review cards there are four options available
to evaluate the difficulty of the card.
Again, if the content couldn't be recalled or was incorrect.
Or if recall occurred successfully, Hard, Good, or Easy
with increasing time intervals
after which the card will again become due.
Cards that are easier to recall, thus are shown less often.
While cards that are more difficult
will be presented more frequently.
This is space repetition in action.
- [Caroline] Anki can be used on multiple devices.
The Anki desktop app can be downloaded for free
from the Anki website.
The app is also free on any android phone.
For IOS devices such as iPhones, the app costs $25.
In order to get started with using the Anki apps
you will want to create an account on Ankiweb.
You can select Sign up
at the top right corner of the webpage.
Ankiweb functions by synchronizing the decks
between the desktop app and the mobile app.
This makes sure that all decks are up to date
when you open Anki on any device.
After creating an account on Ankiweb, you can click
Sync on the top right corner of your desktop app
or synchronize on the bottom right corner of the mobile app.
This will upload current decks to Ankiweb.
After synchronizing for the first time,
closing the desktop app will automatically
upload changes to Ankiweb
and download any changes that were made on another device.
On the mobile app, you have to press
the synchronize button for this to occur.
- [Juan] A great resource for all Anki users in med school
is the medical school Anki reddit.
First thing you should do on this reddit
is scroll down to a really helpful flowchart here
that'll help get you acquainted
with some of the different learning resources available
and the decks that were made from those resources.
There are decks here that can be used for many purposes
from comprehensive studying to cramming.
Although it's important to note
that all of the decks shown here are step one specific.
I'm going to discuss the two
most commonly used decks by Michigan students
which are also the two most comprehensive decks
as far as step material goes.
They are the Lightyear deck,
which was made primarily from the Boards and Beyond videos,
and the Zonky deck which is based
on material covered on Pathoma and Sketchy.
One way you can decide which deck is best for you
is to decide which video resource
fits your learning style better.
Whether that's Boards and Beyond or Pathoma and Sketchy.
So let's say I decided to use the Lightyear deck.
The next step is to download the deck.
And you can find pretty much any well known shared deck
in the sidebar of this reddit.
The Zonky deck is here and the Lightyear deck is here.
These links lead you to posts
that outline how each deck is organized.
And you can scroll through until you find
the download link here.
We can download the Anki specific file and opening it
will automatically import the cards into Anki.
- [Fred] After initially downloading a shared deck
you might find it advantageous
to suspend cards that have certain tags
to avoid seeing new cards with subject material
that you have yet to initially learn about.
By first selecting a deck and clicking Browse
I will trigger the Browse screen.
On the left side of the screen I will see
all of the tags included in each deck within my collection.
For instance, you might choose to suspend cards
tagged with genetics until genetics is covered in lecture.
This approach ensures that you only review material
that you have previously been exposed to
instead of learning subject matter through Anki
which is not conventionally advised.
After selecting a tag, I will select all the cards
that contain that tag by first selecting the first card
and then pressing Shift Click
to select all of the cards with that given tag.
I will then right click and select Toggle Suspend
or press Command J on Macs or Control J on PCs.
In toggling suspend the cards become highlighted in yellow
and there are parenthesis around their due order.
This ensures that these cards
will not be shown as part of your new cards
and will only enter that batch once they're unsuspended.
- [Juan] Okay, so how might you go about
a normal Ankiing section efficiently?
Short cuts can cut out
a lot of the moving your pointer around.
Fred has already shown you a basic card.
Here's the question and there's the button
saying Show Answer.
The shortcut for Show Answer is the Space bar.
So let's press it and get to the next screen with the answer
as well as the buttons that say Again, Hard, Good, and Easy
which actually correspond to one, two, three, and four
on the keyboard.
An efficient way to get through cards quickly
is to keep your four fingers on one, two, three, and four
and your thumb on the space bar.
You never have to move from this position
to get through a deck.
Alternatively, because the Space bar on the screen
also maps to Good, you could just press the Space bar
over and over again to get through cards.
If you wanted to edit the card or find out details about it
press E to enter the edit screen for that specific card.
I sometimes do this to check
which tag a specific card falls under.
Couple more general Anki shortcuts.
B to go to the Browse screen, useful for when
you want to modify which cards are suspended or not.
D sends you back to the decks menu
from when you're in the middle of going through cards.
A if you want to access the Add Cards screen.
Anki has an engaged modding community
that's always looking to better the software,
and we're going to talk about a few of the best add-ons
that we think improved the experience.
But first, here's how to get
to the list of add-ons available for download.
From the app click on Tools and then Add-ons.
Any add-ons that we install will show up here.
Right now let's press Get Add-ons here.
This window asks for a code in the field.
We'll get to that in a sec.
For now, let's press Browse Add-ons.
We have arrived at the list of all the different Add-ons.
The first we'll talk about is hierarchical tags,
which is almost required for the ease of access it provides
in going through decks that have not only tags
but subtags and subtags of those.
Here it is.
And we can read about the add-on in this page
and scroll down until we find the download code here
with which we can go back into the Anki program
to insert into the code window here.
Without this add-on you won't be able
to navigate the browse menu in a way
that allows you to be really specific
with the cards that you suspend.
Next, is more deck stats and time left,
which provides a nice overview window in the main page
outlining how many cards are due that day,
how many of those are new cards you've never seen before,
and how any are review cards.
It also estimates how much time
it would take you to finish that day's cards
based on how fast you've gone in the past.
Next is the pop-up dictionary, which is a useful tool
because you can point out a specific term
that you want to know more about and it does a quick scan
of the rest of the cards in the deck
to look for other instances where that term has come up.
Lastly image occlusion is a huge help
in the creation of certain types of cards.
Let's say you have an anatomy figure in front of you
and you want to obscure the names of the structures
so that you can use Anki to practice recalling them
one at a time.
This add-on is required to make that type of card.
Here's a list of some other add-ons
that we think might be worth looking into
that you can check out for yourself.
- [Caroline] Occasionally when studying
you may feel like you need to review more cards at once
or only test yourself on a specific topic.
This may be the case before an assessment in order to review
only the relevant cards and in large volume.
In order to change the amount of new cards
and maximum reviews per day you can enter the desktop app
and click on the Settings button
which is to the right of each deck.
Then, click options and input your preferred card number
in New Cards Per Day.
The more cards you review per day,
the lower your overall retention might be.
If you click the Reviews tab, you can also enter
your preferred number in Maximum Reviews Per Day.
In order to study a particular topic based
on different tags assigned to cards, click on the name
of the particular deck you are studying from
and click Custom Study on the bottom.
Then, you can select Study by Card State or Tag.
Select your preference for the types of cards
you'd like to review, select Choose Cards
and then select the tags you would like to study.
This will create a temporary new deck on the app.
This deck will disappear once all cards have been reviewed
and cards will automatically
be reincorporated into their original deck.
If you would like to use custom study on the mobile app
select the deck, click on the Setting button
in the lower right corner, select Custom Study,
and again choose the particular tags
you would like to study.
Increasing the number of new cards per day
and maximum reviews per day as well as custom studying
will increase the amount you are able to study per day,
but does not support the long term retention benefits
of spaced repetition.
- We've only skimmed the surface in this video tutorial.
See the video notes for further resources
and send any additional questions
to the medical school Anki sub reddit.
And above all things
- Go blue!